203. On New Year's Eve:

I will not see you
and I will be particularly
beautiful.

I am still the sort of woman
who wants to shout
out confessions into the air.

I will unleash
all of my galaxies. Turn men
into dust.

There is no more shell
of a girl. Nothing fragile
to find here.

202.

There you are in my yard
without your shoes. This is the fourth time
since Tuesday. The sky turns pink
and I have lost my voice
somewhere between Hawthorne and Pleasant.
Everything is turning into itself.
I love you. I think I could love you.
Limbs fall onto the lawn. You erupt
and I am tired of cowards.
It had been simple: You swimming in my sheets,
you swimming inside of me. Beautiful
is like any another clumsy word
in the English language, but my god,
the things I would do to hear you say it
again.

201. Secret.

If you find something beneath the metal
and carefully placed mechanisms.
If you see me as more than volatile and vigilant.
Please do not take away my hardness.

200.

I cut my hair and watch it fall into the sink.
Ten years ago, this would have been something else
and in the morning I would pull on long sleeves
and not tell anybody.

I apologize to my body for not loving it
correctly. It has been good to me.
If I love you now, will you forgive who I was?
It does not know how to answer me.

If I could step out my door and be lost
in the birch trees. If they could tell me what I deserve.
But the world has many languages,
and I am a poor translator.

It is not time yet. I leave in my sleep,
and it is turquoise skies and endless fields
of flora that I can not name. When I am gone,
let me go.

199. Tomorrow.

We blame the magnets in our bodies.
The ones that ask me to take you home,
the ones that weigh our abdomens down
and have us dragging ourselves
across the ground.
Something must be scolded
for this trouble. We wait for sunlight
to burst through our stomachs
and make us feel like human beings again.
My eyes get so wide
that my pupils try to swallow you
whole. If only you didn't bring romance
into it. I could have been content
with hands in my hair, teeth on my neck,
without the snow and stars.

198. Haiku: For all of the beautiful words I could say about you.

They could not compare
to your skin on mine, or the
motion of your breath.

197.

In an airport with stale air,
I do not know how to write you.

Last night
I was in one of the few east coast cities
where I do not know a soul.
I ordered food that made me sick
and did not sleep enough.

Still, I am more at home
in the cabin of a plane, in living
out of a backpack on a hotel room floor.

Sometimes I try to throw myself back
into New England. But you're there
and that's no good either.

This is what happens when
there's a flaw in the system,
metal scraping against metal, sparks flying
into all the wrong corners.

I would like to not have to beg you.
I want the things
I cannot seem to wrap words around.

You are at a Christmas party.
You are drunk at a Christmas party.
I am ten states away
dreaming about being with you,
dreaming about not being with you.

Call me in the middle of the night.
Please,
confess anything.

196. Homosassa.

Everything about this place is warmer
and I do not know what to do
with my voice.

In Massachusetts,
people are afraid to talk about my father.
His name slips out at the dinner table
and everyone stares
into their lasagna.

He does not ask about me.
I am told he was here
a few days before I arrived, but my blood
is so far away from his blood,
that my body cannot feel the remnants
of his presence.

I am not five years old
and I no longer know how to be tied
to people. I leave
everyone.

195.

Love is a sneaky little vampire
that knows more language than words
yet does not hear no.
Sorry for being vulnerable,
I guess. Sorry for leaving
my shoes at your house,
sorry for kissing you again
and again, sorry for the birthday wishes.

In New Hampshire,
birds would smash into our living room
window, and I would bury their tiny bodies
in flowers from the backyard.
Now, if a thing dies,
all I can do is miss it. There is nothing pretty
to cover it up with.

This must be what comes afterwards.
When the bed turns cold and there is space
everywhere. I am pregnant with my solitude,
it is the warmest thing I know.
I would prefer the before.
When it was mischief and fucking
and we hadn't introduced the word maybe
into our dialogue.

Yes, I would want you,
but only if you were as brave as the bird,
as kind as the wildflowers. Capable
of being more human
than not.

194.

I.

One day I met an animal
and I happened to have a steak in my hand.
He followed me around for weeks,
sometimes whimpering, sometimes gnawing
at my wrists, and then he learned how to speak
with a human voice and I thought he sounded beautiful
and I gave it to him. Not that I particularly care
about steak anyway, but now
I don't know what to do with my hands.


II.

I did not mean to turn back
into a monster.


III.

On names:

A.) If you call me the right name
I will want to fall in love with you.

B.) I do not dream about people
before I meet them.
I say hello and later say,
"accident." It is easier to not give
a name to the things that happen to me.

193.

This time they ask me
what I am going to do
with my lungs. I'm tired
and I spend too much time writing
about what I do or do not
deserve. Here:

1.) You are in a suit
and I barely recognize you.
2.) You are ripples and waves,
more than I dare try to count.
3.) And, like most nights, I try my best
to go home alone.

Other men sing to me.
I would much rather be on my floor
listening to you read the newspaper.

So I'm trying to attach
a meaning to this. I'd like to find out
if you are the electricity
or the cathedral. You see,
I could run my vulnerability
through my fingers for days.
Is it shameful
that I wish to know your paper bones?

Tell me about the color you turn
when you consider joy.
I woke up missing you again.
You are not what I want
to think about in the moments
between everything else.

192. Encyclopedia.

I.

I do not like December very much.
There is no blood to guide me home
so instead, I try not to drown in the pine.

I think that I am not gentle
enough to be with anybody.


II.

We lived together,
once. Now, this is so far away
I cannot even say
if I still love him. My memory tells me
that we had twelve seasons
together. But memory
is all there is.

191. The rest.

My name
could make a home
in your mouth.
We are lost, then found,
and lost again.

190. Your house is too large compared to mine.

He kisses me with blood on his mouth
then he is in a golden field
and I am missing my flight again.

A hand has an anchor
tied around its finger, dangling.
It is trying to remember
the color of bravery.

189. Haiku: On the moment flecked with gold that became the very beginning of a problem.

I do not say yes
often. But there was something
in the way you asked.

188.

I prefer you in the moments
where you are not paying attention.
When you laugh too strongly
and the lines of your eyes emerge.
When you catch me listening
and it startles you.

Sometimes I wait for you
to become an animal
and run. You are used to people
watching and touching.
Not listening.

You would prefer that I not see
things. Keep it simple,
remain inaccessible.
I would have preferred that you didn't
see me either, but
accidents happen.

When it is winter,
I think of my stepfather,
and his bloodstained clothes
that were brought home to us
in a plastic bag.

I treat everyone as though
they are already a ghost.
So when you worry
about getting close to me:
don't.

187.

When you are drunk and on the sidewalk
shivering in your black tights
he spins you around to point out the dippers,
but you can name Jupiter
before he does.

When you finally sleep with him
you refuse to take your underwear off first.
You are incapable of being naked
before the other person.

This is what you do,
even though he is always the guide,
the responsible one that takes you home,
holds your hand when it's too dark, and when
it's not, and opens the car door for you
every time.

Everyone is always asking what you want
and the best you can tell them is,
everything as it happens to you.

They ask you why it isn't good enough,
how you can want both more and nothing
in the same moments. It's easy,
you say. Tell them you live in a house
with too many rooms.

Tell them, that things are not supposed
to love you.

186. Haiku: On why you should not be in love with the winter.

Because, goddamn, when 

is the last time you let some-

one take care of you?

185. Haiku: On when he asks you.

You want this to mean
something and you do not want
this to mean something.

184.

I imagine
introducing you to my friends
and them falling in love with you
within the first five minutes.
Being snowed in together,
wearing sheets and listening
to the steam of the radiator
and the flakes falling asleep
against the windows.
Making you breakfast
and giving you the last handful
of blueberries.
I miss missing someone in a way
that doesn't make me feel
like my body is about to fall
to pieces. I dig holes in people
but I can't make a home
out of them. I'm sorry
for that.

183. Orion.

How beautiful it is
to walk home
without you,
slowly,
in the middle of
the night.

182. Crush.

Magical
things have happened we were
together. It snowed on our foreheads
when we were in water.
I was wearing red
and you found me a wolf
to dance with. It was November
and we sat by the sea
without coats.

Non-magical things
have happened too.
The sky isn't clear
when we are outside, together.
I fell asleep on a couch
next to a friend
and you can not shake
the assumption.
You are still afraid
of me.

181.

I wish I was still afraid of things.
I wish I still saw the world in darkness
or gold. Not this in-between,
this brilliant pond water.

I am still writing about forgiveness
in a way that means I do not understand.

We know all about panic.
We go for days without sleeping,
because in his dreams there are bullets
and I'm in a hotel on fire.

This is only part of what keeps us away.
Other people have left us
and sometimes we forget
that it was a long time ago.

180.

Taking a person under your wing
is not the same as pulling out your feathers
in February. There is no warmth
in wind-seared flesh.

179.

You no longer need
this time
to mourn.

How astounding then,
that he thinks of you
as a widow.

These mistakes
are your own.
Wear them

without a badge,
without a veil.

178.

Of all his parts,
you don't get what you want most.

Wrong taste,
maybe the wrong mouth.

You are both hungry.
It has been a very long year.

He tells you he's killed someone.
He says that sometimes,

people stop touching him
when they learn this.

You have never been with anyone
who has been to war.

There is a hardness
to you both and so

you test this. You have both ruined
many things.

He is much more gentle
in your dreams.

Awake, it's neither here
nor there, no specific color.

Where is he?
And where are you?

You stay, quiet
and listening.

177.

Everyone is so
beautiful,

but I do not want
a thing

from any
of them.

176. On romance, as an adult.

Each time you meet him, it is accidental.
He smiles at everyone and this does not
impress you, so you don't let him touch you
until you do.

You still treat life as a schoolroom,
expecting lessons to be learned
as quickly as the snap of a rubber band
against naive summer flesh.

When a person tells you who they are,
you should believe them.

Now: Do you forgive
the letters in the wrong order?
Forgive him when he sleeps with someone
ten years your junior? And does he
forgive you, when you use him
to write about him?

Say that it is fair because with him
there is no point of safety. No soft hum
ringing in your ears the next day.

He tells you not to trust him
so you do not trust him. But you stay
out until dawn like glassy-eyed kids,
and you fall asleep smelling like him,
unsure if you enjoy it or not.

The water and the stars are calculated,
but you do not want to forget them.

175. Haiku on people you consider leaving him for (two).

A bar. The marine.
Strong hands, mouth. Promiscuous,
silver compliments.

174. Haiku on people you consider leaving him for (one).

A coworker, then.
Who is kind and tells you what
you are too good for.

173.

No, I do not miss my father.
It has been twenty-four years
and I remember little.
Waiting for me
at the bottom of the stairs,
a bridge, a car veering
off the road and settling
gently into a ditch.
But other intricacies,
like his voice? I try,
but the images come up mute.

No, I do not miss him.
But because of this, such feelings
are compounded and stumble
all over the other men I meet.
There is no grace in this.
No way to talk about it
without feeling crazy.
I worry that all this time
I've been trying to find him.
I do not need anyone,
but I would like
to be safe.

172.

So he looks at you
and then he stops
looking at you. Jealous
when another man
puts your arm in his.
He was naked and you,
you were not,
yet you argue
about vulnerability
because you hope
that neither one of you
will blossom.

171. Halloween (two).

I.
Much of it is unexpected.
The number of people circling
the park this early.


II.
The mysterious appearance of
a hole in the breast
of your favorite sweater.


III.
None of this is satisfying.
Stay late at work and that is good enough.
Draw until fingers go numb
and hair is halfway down your back.

Something in this would make him proud.
You are not far enough away, yet.


IV.
You begin to feel sick
again. Repeat:
This is not last autumn, this is not last autumn.
This is not last autumn.


V.
He wants something from you.
What? Less discernible.
You do not find out until after,
if they loved you.


VI.
A tree on the page turns red.
This is your fault.
This is always your fault.


VII.
Forget feelings. Sometimes all a person wants
to do is go home and wash their clothes
and not think about
anyone.

170. Halloween.

And when I walk home
at 6:30 in the morning with a peculiar mixture
of shame and satisfaction,
in the smallest costume I've ever dared,
tasting like morning and a hint of gin,
sparkled with a stranger:

I chronicle my life differently now.
Here is the moonlight hitting the street
that you will never see. Here I am in October
and you do not know my address.
Here is a list of mouthes that I have kissed
since yours.

169.

What am I supposed to do
When I remember how to love
Everything,
Again?

168.

You wanted me to stay
quiet. But the threads kept sprouting
and reaching and turning into
beams of light. I understand,
some people are too large
for each other. A crocodile, then?
What would you like me to be today?
Teeth too white to be one
of your piano girls. Pearl wallpaper,
lilies, birch -- no, this place
is too good for us.

167. Haiku: On movement.

It has been ten months.
What have you found out there? Me:
A nice place to sleep.

166.

I would like to become a huntress,
a lantern. The noise that cracks you open
from sleep.

And yet it goes on.
In a way that is not quite horrible
but not quite lovely either.
No, this is not
a gift.

I would like to find my way home.

165.

I no longer have an overabundance
   of patience.
The well of wealth
that I would not have expected to suffer
with age. Where or who
   did I leave it with?
How many times
do I have to bury the room
in flowers?

164.

It is easier to speak
of the things we do not need.

It is impossible for me to be with a person
for years, without eventually becoming the diver
in a cage. Even if there are no teeth for miles.
Even if the ocean sings to me.

I would not be a good mother.
Leaving is ingrained in the nature
of my body. My veins may very well be
the braille of a map.

My grandmothers used to tell me
in soft agreement, to only marry a man
that would set me
on fire. I don't believe in such torrid heat,
but I sleep with rose quartz
under my pillow.

163.

Some days I wake up
and have to check
for my limbs.
I must have been waiting
a long time,
but now I only want my blood
to start flowing
the right way again.

162.

He tells me that I am a wild animal,
the way my legs carry me
when I am startled, and later,
the same legs around his waist.

Some days I'm the lion,
other days I wish
I was the lion. It's a good thing
that you don't live here anymore.

161.

The wrong apparition at my window;
I am saving all of my forgiveness
for you.

160. Tuesday.

I come home, cook some eggplant
on the stove, and cry,
and cry, and cry. There is a lump of saliva
or tears in my throat and I cannot remember
the last time I've done this.
I cannot remember if I am human
and if this is for you and the smoke
alarm sounds and it's over.

We do not even speak anymore
in my sleep. By the time it is light enough
to see the blossoming of my wallpaper
I only recall blue eyes and hands
everywhere. I write these poems
because I have no place else to go.

159.

Still at the bottom of the sea, still
forcing out syllables into
the salt.

I hope she tells you
about my dress and my joy
and that it stirs something up
out of the sand.

As if we still shared
the same ocean or were pulled
by the same moon.

158. Haiku: On survival.

If I am living
in the belly of the wolf
where does that leave you?

157.

I have no honey, nor
confessions.
How can I
call someone darling
without the taste of your name
in my mouth?

156.

I have not been sleeping
again. When I do,
I see white houses, the lake,
storms. I touch the tops
of trees. I am here, there.
Here.

155.

Say the sea has a name
outside of language,
and I am afraid
to be the last one
to speak it.

154.

The first man I fell in love with
was married yesterday.
The weather was humid,
I wrote my grocery list,
and did not lose sleep.
Number all the lines
and bury them in the yard.
Something about this
isn't working out.

There are things I must say
before I become too old
and hardened.
I notice the way light twists
across the surface of the lake,
I'm still afraid of distance,
sometimes, want to smell like lilacs,
and find home in a human
body.

I can sit on this for days
and only tell you
one-eighth of what I intended.
I miss New York,
and being a stranger.
I have sandpaper edges
and I'm sorry for that,
but it's only when looking at me
sideways, and I don't want anyone
who looks at me sideways.

When is the last time
we were over the moon?
Built a goddamn rocket ship
and strapped ourselves in?

When is the last time
we had an excuse
not to run?

153. November.

My bowl of soup
and someone
else.

152.

Perhaps
the best and most honest
thing would be
to not mind
if a person scared the hell
out of me.

151. Then, after.

You were the spirit
in the strands
of my hair.

***

I want to be
the sound of something
blooming.

150.

And if I must
draw tulips
until I stop dreaming
about tulips

then my pen
will be to paper
until petals
fall from
my mouth.

149.

I would like

to weave

myself into
the sea

Where

is my human

heart?

147 & 148. Haiku: On becoming asexual after a devastatingly devastating (and mildly shattering) breakup.

The first erection
felt through my skirt at a bar:
Animal. Boring.

***

The blur of the fan
across my torso: I can't
make myself come, still.

146. Sun, sky, moon, stars.

I.

You were a poem
I could not keep writing,
each pen stroke a slice
to my fingertips.


II.

Loyalty, yes.
There's that.


III.

I am not an atheist
because I once dreamed
about my grandmother.
I was eleven and standing in the bathroom
brushing my teeth, she was crying,
and told me she was sorry.
The next day she was found
dead in her backyard
by my mother
who screamed so loudly,
we heard her next door,
across the peach and apple trees.


IV.

Nothing about this life
is what I expected.

145.

Please understand:
I am here
because it was
the only artery
I could find
that led away
from you.

144. The breath of the ocean.

come home
come home
come home.

143. On leaving you for the first time.

June.
Here, without being
romantic,
my things in boxes.

142.

I am the kettle
whistling into the dawn,
I am the flame
that falls from the stars.
I can move through the continent,
get lost at sea.
I can become
the strongest woman.
I can befriend
the red-tailed hawk
and the white-tailed deer,
borrow their wings and tails.
But with every extremity,
sound barrier, flare, and flash:
Still you, I can not
outrun.

141.

I had always said
that I would never leave a city
because of a man.
But the promise
of being able to step out
my front door
without smelling you
in the trees,
is the greatest gift
I could give to myself.

140.

A man was hit by a train
at the mouth of the tunnel
near work. I think I can feel his ghost,
before speeding into the yellowed dark.
On the way home,
another train was stopped for twenty minutes
while another man wouldn't stop frolicking
on the tracks.
Sadness for him, and a selfish
annoyance. I am sorry,
But I am not as good a person
as I once was.

What will you miss about me?
The way I can recognize a heron's silhouette
on the water at late dusk?
The mint in my hair?
The first time I saw you cry?

I worry that the track is still red,
that somebody wasn't able to scrub it clean.
That ghosts are real and the man
won't know how to leave.
That there's no light to leap into.
That you'll forget that my voice
once sang your name.

139. Now:

I can do things
Like wear heels
And not worry
About being
Larger than you.
I can expand myself
Without apology,
Without
Guilt.

138.

I have tried
to write about this
for two
years. Did you know
that a cancer patient's earlobes
will curl
when the person
is close
to death?
That is the best I can tell of
any of it,
this beast.

137.

I became
what you wanted
in the dark,

and now every constellation
knows
my name.

136.

Speaking to you
Opens the dark tunnel
If I must
I choose the lilacs
Blooming in spring
Over the edge
Of the knife.

135.

A man in front of me
in a subway tunnel,
wearing your cologne.
At home, on the floor
of the bathtub,
I purge the rest of you
from my body.

134.

My kitchen smells like you
in springtime, morning.
Brewing coffee, sliced melons,
my hair damp across my cheeks.
This, a first, has made me
want to surrender Boston.
Last night I dreamed
that I gave you a black eye
without touching you.
You said it was because
we weren't speaking.
I know.

133.

I did not come home last night.
I drank gin and tonics that did not taste
like you. I went to bed dizzy,
did not recognize the ceiling, the shape
of the bathroom light switch.
I am thinking about getting another tattoo.
Perhaps in a year, most of my visible skin
will look foreign to you.
This thought should not be appealing.
Things keep faltering.
I am trying not to be a machine.
The trees in my part of town
look as though they've been dipped in cotton.
I can not even remember whether it's oak or maple
outside of your bedroom window.

132.

The rotting in my stomach,
the browning of the petals,
the spoiled fruit on the table.
I have learned:
simply because a person exudes
a gentleness and washes the world
in an ocean of calm,
does not mean that there is not
a violence inside.

131.

I have a short list of things
that are becoming problematic.

Yesterday, downtown crossing
was on fire, and I nearly called you
because I worry.
And when I worry I imagine things
like you in your high-rise,
flames everywhere,
so while we have not exchanged a word
in two months,
I wanted to know
that you were safe.

Safety, I've learned,
is surprisingly subjective.

Friends give advice. Say
to keep a six-month hourglass
on my windowsill. To take notice
of the damage, because that is where
the light will filter in.

They mean well,
but they have not lived
in my body.

I am expected to learn
how to live without you,
but what scares me is that I am.
I sleep alone and with less
dreams, I have dinner
with coworkers in place of you,
I buy my preferred juice
for the refrigerator
instead of yours.

I miss Devens and the woods,
Maine and the salt,
your gingham shirt
that I wrote a poem about
when we first met
nearly four years
ago. It is irrelevant of course,
but from time to time it clicks
through my head like ticker tape.

Everything can be measured,
now, and I cannot forget
your shape.

130. Patience.

I believe that need
of another human
is a myth.
I can not give my body
or nourishment,
but I will write you
poems, paint you tulips,
and speak embers
until I'm warm enough
again.

129.

In ruffling through pages of sketchbooks
searching for a drawing of goldfish
(specifically, for the movement
and softness in their caudal fins),
you find the note
and even though there has been time
and even though it says nothing of importance
(something about meeting after work,
plans, a drink, something about soon)
and even though you have been
what one might describe as "fine,"
you are forced to put your hand
over your mouth because something
is coming up fast, choking or noise
or vomit or an animal cry
that is determined to force its way out,
and your face does not feel like your own
with your fingers pressing into it
and your eyes are the Mississippi
and everything is holding you too tightly
and the fish are still missing, swimming somewhere
on some other pages,
and you have a deadline
and you haven't done nearly enough with the day,
and the water runs faster than you do,
and everything but him has always run faster than you do,
and he
will not be coming
back.

128. On being awake.

I am my own
physician, tracking
the progress.
How selfish am I,
wanting to make a dent
in a life
when I am no
overwhelmingly
towering
city.

127.

And so the notches on my ribs multiply,
living well is the best revenge, etcetera.
Yet I still think of you when I buy train tickets,
and plant flags for your specter in every city.

126.

I wear the letter L on my glove
like a lie, like an albatross.
I can't wish you well,
can't forgive you,
can't remove the shape of your ghost
from the Sunday morning light
pushing through the curtains,
can't stop imagining you with her,
can't forgive her either,
can't stop missing your friends,
your family, your dog,
can't do anything but overwork myself,
can't stop the dreams, the panic,
the sickeningly wishful thinking.
This is why people kill themselves
after the death of a relationship:
not because they can't live without
a person, but because they can't outrun
or soothe or talk themselves out of
everything after.

YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE
WHO HAS HAD THIS LOSS.

125.

They say that deja vu occurs
because we have come to a checkpoint
that we put down in our life chart
to assure our human selves
that we are on the correct place
in our path. I have only experienced
deja vu twice, but tonight as I turned
onto my street, listening to the Magnetic Fields
with my coat buttoned up to my chin,
thirty years of gravity rushed into my body
and I understood that it was all right
to be here without you, and miss you,
and to work late, and write poems, and pause
at the flower shop's steps
every morning, and to not want
to love anybody right now, and put extra milk
in my coffee, and be angry, and hopeful
and panicked and this. I am here, I am here,
I am here.

124.

A list of words
that I can no longer appreciate:
copilot, cage, trouble, taciturn.

The shortest distance between
two points is a line.

Euclid once defined the point as
that which has no part.
Analog watches have approximately
one-hundred and eighteen parts,

and I could not give less of a shit
about time.

I'm sorry for the mischief.
This isn't going very well.

I dreamed that we were snowed in
at a motel in Philadelphia.
I pointed out the window and said,
"I have been here before,"
except this time I was delighted.

I think I saw her on the train once.
The orange line, downtown crossing
to north station. She saw me, too.
She was shorter than I expected.
Wore more makeup than I expected.

And I don't know, sometimes the room
is soft yellow, sometimes it's not
a color at all. I am still adjusting
to this new sense of vision.
It doesn't make very much sense.

I imagine that in another life --
well, I imagine many tangents,
but I will start small:
I could listen to a song about New Hampshire
and feel joy.

123. A haiku: Because I would like for you to understand the line that was drawn in the dirt.

You wanted to know
why he loved me. This is it:
Light, courage, patience.

122.

She is my little bridge
between what you once were,
what I once was,
and the creatures
we now embody. It's nice.
Like she exists to clean
the memories with the white dresses,
to starch and preserve the folds
every time my sadness
drags them through the mud.

Perhaps if we had a few more weeks,
we would have become friends.
For me, it has always been terrifying,
swimming alone in the lake, at night.
But her on the shore,
shining her flashlight,
and she doesn't even owe me
anything.

121. Haiku: On February sixteenth I celebrated my birthday.

A grey confession:
I may be happier now
without you and I.

120.

Of course I lied.
Or it would have been
about how all I wanted
was to make you happy,
and travel, and become
a great artist,
and marry you
on wagon hill farm.
A girl can not afford
to be so extravagant
with the truth.

119.

We all read the stories in a different way.
Him on the ledge again, for the fourth year
     in a row, him finding joy in the dull girls
that nod their head, him sleeping with everybody,
him sleeping with nobody, the light in the room
on, the light in the room off. The world in bloom,
     the world not in bloom, what are you saying here,
it's only February, all of it should be frozen,
our hearts should not be running like rabbits,
we should not have to be told to calm down.

118.

It's not roses.
Happiness has many names
that the body can recognize.
Forgiveness too,
but forgiveness
no longer has a place
here.

I have a temper
but I keep my hands busy
so they don't go
the wrong way.
After a while,
a person gets tired
of things going
the wrong way.

They say that instinct
as an explanation for human behavior
has become less common,
but I knew about her
before you did, so
there's that.

I cut my hair again.
My father has come back.
On Tuesday, I vomited
for the first time in over a year.
I am not supposed to tell you
about these things, and
I can't quite decide
if there's fairness in that.

117.

I have been collecting
photographs of cream
as it is poured into coffee.
The moments after the dive,
before they are fully merged,
before they become inseparable
by silver spoons,
a phenomenon
you would take
great pleasure in.
      Your honor,
      I would like to present these images
      as evidence
      that I know you better than anybody.
In your kitchen,
at the bed and breakfast,
at Rosie's bakery, at the diner
on Holland
two blocks from my apartment.
Where do you begin
your mornings now?

116. A haiku debating the scientific chances of whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow.

I see this birthday
as the start of a decade
without your bullshit.

115. Slower.

The only thing I care about
these days, is how much light
can come from a person.
Give me a body that knows
how to tell the truth.
Give me something
that knows
how to be good.

114.

It is difficult
to see the world bathed in
such ecstatic color,
and you, in grey.

113.

I have this heart and
it is noisy and a little clumsy
and it can no longer speak
your name beyond the first letter,
sounding like a hum, sounding like
an admission,
sounding like the electricity
in the fence that I wish would keep me
from missing you.

112. A haiku on what it is to both miss and be the color red.

Being without you
means that at any moment
I could turn to flame.

111.

They say that human beings dream
when the mind is attempting
to solve a problem. This explanation
is problematic in itself,
as there is no mystery to this.
You are not here. I understand
why you are not here. You are not
coming back. I understand why
you are not coming back.
Equation complete, facts checked.
But last night,
dream-you missed dream-me,
and I'll take all the victories
I can get.

I heard that snowy owls
have reached the coast of Massachusetts.
These rare migrations
are apparently called "irruptions."

What I'm saying is, I've dreamt
about you each night since November.

There was this photo, outside of a dream,
where the sky was blue and you were
encased in glass. You were smiling,
but the light was against you
in such a way that I could not see
your eyes, and there was no way of telling
how far it extended, how genuine
it may have been, or if something in it
had been wanting for sleep.

110.

It was easy to become this woman.
Who does not know how to color
the air, who does not remember the taste
of mint, before mint was
a liar. This woman who does not use cinnamon
on toast, who believes in nothing
but science.

109. January 19th.

Tomorrow is your birthday.

Last year we traveled,
had a hotel room in Washington D.C.,
you let me have the window seat on the plane.
The year before, I woke up at 5am
and covered our apartment
in small notes. On the bathroom mirror,
in the shower, in the coffee jar.
Your car too, although it had snowed
the night before, and your windshield wipers
were frozen solid. The year before that
I had just realized that you were wonderful
and made you a CD of my favorite songs
(and you say that things
were never simple).

You will be twenty-eight. It's true, you know,
that you begin to come into yourself
as you approach thirty. You'll see.

Tomorrow is your birthday.
I will give you only my thoughts.

I no longer want to count the weeks
that I've been without you.
As each passes, cells in my body die off
and are replaced by ones that have never felt
your touch, your breath, the vibrations of your voice.
Eventually I will be brand new.
Perhaps clean.

Tomorrow is your birthday. I miss you very much.

108. The races versus the sawgrass.

The same bottle of liquor
has sat patiently in my pantry
since Thanksgiving. I have chosen
against dulling this.

It is strange to think of her
touching the clothes I used to touch.
Dress shirts that you may have bought
only after asking me if the color
was friend or foe against your skin.
It is strange to think

that you were the one to move on
first, as we had always declared me
as the one with a magnetic personality.
Although, if I were to be cruelly honest,

it was not the lack of opportunities
that prevented me from breaking
across the taped line, but is was my ability,
or less humbly, my wisdom, that allowed
me to say no. To pretend I was a great blue heron,
pretend I was at peace in the marsh,

and, more honesty, sometimes not needing
to pretend these things at all.
Are great blue herons hunted? I know they are seen
as beautiful, without being particularly delicate.

You required too much of me,
at the expense of my body and my stillness.
I notice the irony, with you now gone,
that I cannot sleep at night, that I am able
to see the world in light, that I make more conversation
with strangers. Again, honesty:

Something important was suffocated.
I am beginning to understand what that was,
and despite the grief I have for you, amidst the grief
I have for you, how I will get it back.

107. A haiku on the bottom thoroughly dropping out (see also: the stomach doesn't lie).

There is not a thing
That can brace for the moment
You see him with her.

106.

In Massachusetts,
it has not yet snowed
this winter.
We have not fallen asleep
to the sound of steam
trying to escape
my bedroom radiator,
nor have we woken
to cinnamon coffee
and french toast.
There is nothing about this
January that I recognize.
But I'm trying
to make it home.

105. The second haiku I have ever written: For the measurements of rebirth.

There are many things
I will move past with fervor.
But not this, not this.

104.

At seven and a half weeks
I have accumulated a list of small
changes. I am telling more
of the truth. I stain my lips
the color of raspberries.
Talk to strangers on the train.
Do not return their calls.
I stay up too late, but nearly sleep
through the night.
   It's all very trivial.

It has been long enough now.
It has not been long enough now.

The views tilt slightly, and
I imagine that you are trying to see me
as the villain. I'm not.
I'm not the hero either.

I am not covered in feathers,
nor scales. Much of the time
I am grossly human,
pointing out planets and taking
great pleasure in discussing
the scientific theories of bees,
and the possible shapes of the universe.
Once, you loved these things
about me.

When you read my letter,
did you whisper back?
Was the room flooded in light?
Or was it late, nearly midnight,
was it dark and were you
sorry?

You always said you admired my ability
to forgive. Unfortunately, for lovers
who have left me and later sought
resurrection, it was this same forgiveness
that had me say
                       no.
I owe forgiveness my life, you see.

103. A haiku for the measurements of death.

You may be the moon
But I have long extended
Far beyond my means

One-hundred and two.

The body will tell you
when something is wrong.

Sacrifice itself to push
you back onto the correct
artery.

I have been healthy
since November.

Now, tell me what you think
about coincidence

and the geese
that fly south
in winter.

One-hundred and one.

You find a picture
of your lover smoking a cigarette,
and the only appropriate thoughts
are, Who is this person, and,
What else do I not know about him.

Did you know that there is a form of grief
that actually makes a person vomit?

Say you can only have one
as your heart's companion. Lantern
or compass.

Choose. Wait
for it to be finished.