237. Love letter, lost letter.

My legs
are maps of the blacks and blues
of the acres we failed
to put between us.

236. Direct

Not here. It has been many months
and none of us are tired anymore.
We can draw perfect circles,
eyes closed, humming our favorite song
backwards.

My friend tells me Venus is retrograde
and this means we work inside ourselves
and in forty-something days something about it
is supposed to end up on the outside.
I'd like that. For this to survive
on the outside.

Thing is, most of the time,
you open your mouth so wide
you're afraid you'll turn inside out.

And there is so much time spent
being afraid.

Preferred: No more room for sorrow here.
No more nights on the lawn of city hall,
no more accidental landings,
no more stolen washing machines.
We are both a window and a door.

Last night, Christmas, I don't remember the weather
but we almost got exactly what we wanted.

One: I think you belong to South Carolina.
Two: The landscape shakes
when you talk.
Three: You would like to not see another winter.
Four: When you've been drinking,
you ask me to go with you.

I don't like the snow either,
but I am New England and New England
is me. If I am with you, then I am a softness
that my body cannot afford
to be.

Yours.

235. Birthday celebrations in your early thirties.

You have the legs
of a wild animal
and my voice is too loud
to make you stay anywhere.
You burn yourself alive, I love you,
I love you, and this is where I leave you
one more time. It is
the ugliest circle,
and I've run out of sheets
to throw over it. Give me gasoline.
Quiet now, hand to mouth,
we are always living
hand to mouth, which is,
for all intents and purposes,
backwards. This time,
I will start a war.
"You see beauty
and I see something else."

234. *

Remind me how north feels.
I have let many things
slip through the gaps of my fingers.
I could let
a whole galaxy crash to the ground
if I look far enough away.
I do not devour.
I'm only tired
of cutting myself open.

233. None.

I will try to breathe life into a thing
until it rots beneath my lips.
The ceiling crackling above our heads -
is this when it happens?
Another chain around the neck
of the half year when our names went
from mouth to mouth
to palm, to secret,
to jar under the bathroom sink
where they would echo across the porcelain,
shooting into our stomachs each time
our apartments were too empty.
Vicious little arrows.
October came tumbling in and by then
I was a warrior.
I said I was prepared
for your presence.

There has not been enough time.

232. Chronological

I.
You've done this before.
Taken airplanes as your religion,
held your baptism at one thousand feet.
Cleansed anew for each city.
It is not strictly animal; you fall in love
often and well.

II.
It is painful to navigate
through new people.
The surprise at the ache
when they do not touch you
goodbye.

III.
I want to erupt into shivers, collapse
in joy, be pulled back to earth
at the sound of a voice
that knows my spine and instincts
as well as any flight path.

IV.
The syllables of
brav-er-y
are familiar to our mouths
yet what we think about the most
is how we are going
to leave.

231. Japan

Every body I've ever been with
has been more a mirror
than a lover. In my day dreams
I am doused in white and transform
into storm. In my night dreams,
bravery is carved
into my palms a thousand times
and my blood is the color of winters
that I have no interest
in being anymore.

230. For A.

I've broken my legs again.
I haven't been making it home.
I've decided to let the heart
go back to Virginia. Part of it,
anyway, the one that never stopped
tip-toeing into the dreams
of monsters and knives and
mothers. I hear her voice
for the first time in four years.
There is no parachute
for that.

229. August 16th, Salem, Moon: Waxing

At this stage of adulthood
I cry so infrequently, quarterly
at best, that the occurrences have become a thing
I cannot help but document.

I am crying and facing the northwest wall of my bedroom
and noticing the one-inch space where the paint beneath
wants us to remember its past life.
I am in the bathroom at work feeling
like a bit of an idiot.
I am at the shore and it feels as though my bones
are trying to shake their way out of my skin.
I am crying at 9:41 P.M. and it is
startling. And a Thursday.

And so forth.
I do not enjoy being reminded that I am human,
but I hear that no one is fed a life
solely consisting of cups filled with joy.

Something here runneth over. Sometimes
I'm suffocating, regardless of which town
my feet whisper home to. I will wake up
in the middle of the night and note
that there is not a person in an eighty-seven mile radius
whom I can tell about the blue paint,
or how my sister came home last week, or how
I occasionally get so goddamned lonely
that I want nothing more than to be held
but my pride has grown into an awful beast
that won't let me call out anyone's name.

228.

The last time I felt absence,
a well, an echo? The way you can't sit still
is a reminder of this
and I am not quite sure
where I am supposed to bring you.
My reappearances have poor timing,
I know. We all want
to be in two places at once.
Lord knows which one of us
is the dragon.

227.

The worst thing about being
a haunted house? It's
exhausting. Don't get lost here,
nothing is safe, et cetera.
I want to write a decent poem
and fall asleep
at the bottom of the stairs.
No, I want to live outdoors.
Always almost there.
The things I miss don't taste
like anything.

226.

Which nerve was it
running across your spine
that found me after a decade?
I do not know how to carry
anything beyond
a reasonable shelf life
and here you are again
trying to teach me the vocabulary
of apologies
when I'd thought we left this
with empty pockets.
Should I tell you about the things
I owe other people
or the ones that are owed
to my own stomach, palms,
bed? Yes, you were
one of the good ones.
Tell me that's all you needed
to hear.

225.

Once,
I compared you
to the loch ness monster
and you raised your head
out of the water
so far towards the sky
that we all thought
you would snap your neck
trying to prove us wrong.

224. Taxi

All of these tornadoes
In the fields of your hair
In my street
In our spit.
As if your body
Was still mine
To touch.

223. After You've Left

When I was a baby,
our apartment complex caught fire.
They say I slept through everything,
flames and sirens and all of our belongings
being reduced to ash.

As an adult, I have lost this talent.
If I marry you, I will sew Orion
into my dress. I can't figure out
what you want.

Fine, give me this
failure. I would like to live
without the barricades.
Invent colors and assign them
human names.

This is where it begins
to get difficult again.
You look for me without words,
voice. I will not wear white,
I will not ask you to change.

I was born to turn into flame.
I am hard to look at, I know this.
A man is flying here to see if I still light up
the world. Do you know how far
Texas is from Massachusetts?

I can't force it to matter,
can't spark on command.
In my driveway, clumsy.
At the bottom of the stairs,
clumsier still.

You're the only one
I think about.

222. February 16th

You, who cannot fall
asleep with anything around your wrist,

Who are you
to tell any man that he should not be
an island?

221. Celestial Beings

You speak to him
with stars in your mouth
and nothing happens
in the right order.
The days you wear poppies 
and nobody wants to kiss your neck.
The days you douse yourself in fire 
and too many people 
want to know your name.

Oh, the things you would beg to do
to his body. If anyone could challenge 
the pull of the moon
it would be you and your hips.
But there will be no novas
erupting on your tongue 
tonight. You are darkness
and you are light. You are terrified
and you are terrifying.

You are better than this.
You were supposed to be better than this.
The sky begins to fall on your shoulders
and he wants to know why
you are blinking, 
why you would not want
to see all of it
as it happens.

220. Love Poem

Once, in high school,
someone told me that suicides
go straight to purgatory.
I gave her a black eye
because
if there is a heaven
it was made
for people like you.

219. Harvest

I've decided to stop watering
the vegetables in the garden.
You haven't eaten in weeks.
What more could I possibly do?
I am writing speeches
about how we should move
to the orchard or Kansas or
the middle of wine country.
I'd like to see us flourish.
Perhaps I should shout
and not whisper.
You treat the cabbage like it's yours,
and the tomatoes as though
you don't have to work for them.
The peppers told me
they are disappointed. I didn't have
an excuse for you.
I'm hungry. Waiting for sweetness
to follow.

218. Battalion

Next month,
it will have been ten years
since I tried to kill myself.
It took me eight to begin
treating birthdays
as celebrations.

Now I wear dresses
for every occasion I can and smell
like soft marshmallows
and sparks.

There are so many things
I would not have gotten to love.
Good and bad.
I don't know if I'm any better
at this, but I can stand
near the kitchen drawers
without temptation.

That has to be something.

217. Retraction

I am interested in the way beings produce light
and where they choose to reflect it.
Then there's you, my sugar-wolf,
devour being your verb
of choice. And it's always choice,
isn't it?

You do not want to be your parents,
your brothers. I do not want to be the person
that wastes away while you figure out how
to forgive them. Or the invisible blood
that makes you run
from your body.

I think your skin is beautiful.
All the places you've been, and I will argue
that you smell like you've been dusted in heaven.
Even after you've covered me in teeth marks.

You don't always have to play
the villain or the coward. I can only say please
so many times before my tongue
falls out. A person gets tired. There is so much more
to you than this.

216.

The street wearing a thin garment
of snow. In the kitchen, you pray
for the sound of a glass
breaking. Instead, the hum
of the appliances. You shout at the
refrigerator. It is no excuse.
Because you tasted the sweetness
of not being alone.

215. Addendum (Blizzard of February 2013)

Don't worry,
You're safe now.
You can roam
The entire city
With your clothes off,
Without having
To think of me.

214. Suicide Attempt #18.5

If your mother is in the garage
with the car running
that means it is Tuesday.

On Wednesday, only one of you
will remember this faux pas
and for the rest of your life

You will be the one who remembers
the most in any pairing.

*

By Thursday,
everything is a weapon.
You are dreaming

Of your little sister again
and the monsters she does not need
saving from.

You have all grown up
into different kinds of flowers
and creatures.

213. Premature Hauntings

I began writing about you
long before we met.

Strange little prophecies,
bloodied roses thrown
on the snow.

They call this the wolf moon.
I would like for you to come over
and devour me.

212. Plight of the Cartographer (Please Come Home)

You want to be made
out of maps? 
It's too late 
             for that,
love.

211. War

Be selfish.
Dig into him
with your bare hands.
The sky will be red
no matter which path
you choose.
Cover your knuckles
in little plums
and do not apologize.
Not everyone wants
the olive branch,
least of all you,
you cold sad thing,
living on animal
instincts. Let the winter
turn your bones
into steel. Do not stop
for anyone, do not
turn back, for risk
of snapping your neck.
Bury it. Do not come back
until spring.

210. The Mathematics of Magnets

All of your bravado.
All of these circles.
No one shall ever touch you.
Tell him that's what you want.
Make him believe it.

209. Kentucky Derby

Loss is like an old lover
whose bruises you still carry
because you never learned
how to say I'm sorry
or I forgive you.

You try to learn how to behave.
How to sit still with a person
or a place and have it equal
contentment.

*

All good things take time, yes,
but you did not even think
that you would make it to thirty.

You owe the world now.
All the prayers it said for you.

*

Do not love him, do not love him,
do not love him.
Turn this into law.
Repeat it until your stomach is full
and you are sick.

He is outside your window,
singing. He is always singing
and waiting for you to tap along,
not understanding what it means
for your feet to be still.

208. Birthday Present

I suppose you'd like an invitation.
It's not all spun sugar and confetti here.
My palms pressed to my eyes.
I will offer what I can,

call you handsome and let you stay the night.
You have come
so far, haven't you?
The warmth of your hands
finally reaching the shore,

wrung and tired and aching to be clean.
So this is the trick to happiness.
You on the bed with a mouthful
of patience. You in the stairwell
holding me up against the wall.

You have all the answers,
so tell me: Why keep this many
of my slivers in your memory
if you're not going to touch me
in an interesting way.

207. Vaccine

I refer to men as fevers
Because of the flush
Because of their lifespan
Because I feel much
More like myself
After they've gone.

206.

Maybe I love you,
maybe I don't.
But I know the electricity
generated by my body
when you walk
into a room.

Dear Readers,

[Pictured: Doodles and drafts, from an airplane between Tampa and Baltimore.]

This blog has a strange reader-writer dynamic. We are very quiet with each other. I could probably count on one hand how many times I have posted a note to you in between poems. And the rare comments and emails are almost always left anonymously. I know bits of your stories, bits of your feelings, often only attached to an initial. I don't thank you enough. This blog has existed since 2008. I do not promote it anywhere, and nearly everyone that I know in my tangible world does not know about it. Yet still, you've found me and followed, and I could not be more grateful. For your support, for your stories, for your sharing, for knowing that someone out there can relate to the silly things that spill out of me here (and not always in a very beautiful or even decent way).

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

At the very beginning of 2012, still spinning from the end of a relationship and needing arbitrary goals, I decided to write and post one hundred poems by the end of the year. I didn't fail. I ended up at one hundred and three, not included drafts and fragments that were never posted here. I do not have a similar goal for 2013, but I do intend on continuing to write and post, but without the unnecessary pressure. I do not know what is going to happen here.

However, there is one small addition. I understand that many of you have found me through tumblr posts, so I have created a tumblr that will hold identical content to what is found here, in hopes that this will make reading this a little more convenient for you. Let me know what you think?

As for 2013, I think that Neil Gaiman has said it best: "So that is my wish for you, and for me. Bravery and joy." 

I love you, strangers.

205. On New Year's Day:

Nobody could find you at midnight.
I'm beginning to wonder if you were something
made up by my imagination
to push me through the autumn.

I went home with somebody else
and didn't feel anything.
This is why I miss you:
You shook me awake
when everyone else
kept me dull and tired.
You wiped my eyes
clean.

This is a poor description.
I wish I could articulate
you better.

We collect the things that we relate to.
Jars of dandelion, photographs
of county lines, shards of glass. You?
You have not let another person
into your apartment,
and the company you keep
remains a mystery.

I would not know what to give you.

Haunt me.
Be the voice in the night,
the presence in an empty room.

204.

If I could wish
anything for you
it would be
that you fall in love
with the person you are
and learn to forgive
the person you were
and see all of the room
you still have
inside of you
and finally allow
something to fill it.