on tuesday,
dylann roof was sentenced to his death.
on tuesday we tried
to make one body feel like nine.
to make one body feel like justice.
on tuesday we said
there has got to be some price to pay
for entering the house of god
with a sinful tongue
and a handgun.

today,
six days later,
we remembered the rev. dr. martin luther king, jr.
we looked at the world,
called it a place with potential for change,
called it that because there has to be some softer way
to look at bloodshed,
for sanity’s sake.
if not then
all that remains is a solitary image of dr. king rolling in his grave because he knows,
knows that breathless black bodies
are a constant,
are transcenders of time,
whether sunken in rivers,
hung from taut ropes,
or bathing in blood on historic church floors,
singing, singing, screaming, shrill
for some messiah bringing mercy, mercy, mercy.

felicia sanders wants mercy:
prays for it, wills it down from up above,
unfolded from the hands of god
so that it might fall upon the head and in the eyes
and within the very being
of the man who killed her son.


it takes a certain grace —
one so foreign to me i can hardly write of it —
to see god in such men who deliberately defy Him,
to ask that heaven’s gates
be so indiscriminate and overt.
i would want him to burn for this.
but it is not my say,
not my life,
not my long, resounding, unflinching “hallelujah!”
not my certain type of grace.

breathless black bodies
are a constant,
are transcenders of time, a recurring motif.
but so too, then, is the black body full
of breath,
that inhales and exhales faith
without ceasing.

such is the black body
that sees a little bit of god in dylann roof,
that prays that he prays for forgiveness,
that thinks there to be but one kingdom,
and he, too,
a worthy subject.

the solitary image of dr. king rolling in his grave
is not a surprise.
the black body has always known
so well
how to die.

but felicia sanders hopes her son’s killer finds mercy.
perhaps the one thing the black body has always known better
is how to love.

(a.m.)

i.

your love is like that
of romeo and juliet.
you fit perfectly,
like puzzle pieces,
and despite the raging seas,
you both man the sails
of your eager ship.

ii.

the night sky
is empty,
for all the stars are now in your eyes.
and you have all the blueprints planned out
as though you've forgotten that life
is not a house.

you keep on running,
as though you've forgotten that life
is not a track.

you keep on loving,
as though you've forgotten that life
spares no one

(not romeo, not juliet).


iii.**

and just like romeo,
and his dear juliet,
in the end,
you will both come crashing down.

(a.m.)

The light shines down
On your pale face
And outlines your vulnerable lips
With a heavenly glow,
And bathes your pleading eyes
With pure light.

You look away,
Afraid,
Because you know that the light
Has always revealed your scars,
Your flaws,
Your imperfections.

But I simply laugh
And think
How lucky the sun is
To be so close to someone like you.

(a.m.)

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that if the phrase “adding insult to injury” had a feeling,
that would be it.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it sounds like “hands up, don’t shoot,” like “i can’t breathe,”
like blood hitting a pavement that seems as though it was built
to catch those droplets.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it tastes like skittles and arizona tea,
four years old but still carrying the fresh sting of a wound just opened.
i imagine that it tastes 
like history repeating itself,
like seeing your son or daughter recycled each week
on every news report, on every tv station.
each time it is a different body, 
but it is always the same hand pulling the trigger,
the same black blood being spilled,
the same cries left unheard;
we shout “black lives matter”
and yet, still,
they cut them too short.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it looks like a web of lies too thick to cut through — 
every strand another weapon that he did or did not have,
another order that he did or did not follow,
another sin that he did or did not commit;
the only black they care about
is the color of the ink they use
to draw your angel-headed boy
a set of horns.
i imagine that it looks like evidence hidden,
like sparknotes-type skim-throughs labeled “thorough investigations,”
like another unindicted officer walking freely atop the cries of those 
who charged into a battle they knew they would, but hoped they would not, lose.
a battle they have fought too many times before.
i imagine that it looks
like an empty chair at the dinner table,
like cold-blooded ****** disguised as justice
with the help of a blue hat and a badge.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but if you listen closely enough,
you can hear it
in every cautious goodbye she says to her children whenever they leave the house,
or in the silence that those goodbyes used to fill.

can you hear it?
you will have to push past the shouts
of the big bold letters that they want you to believe.

somewhere,
somewhere in there,
a black mother’s heart is crying.
it is a gentle, hushed cry 
that the world does not want to hear.

but the tears are still just as wet.

(a.m.)

you always complained
that you were a dandelion
in a garden of roses,
a pest, a **** --
something unlovable.

and maybe you weren't perfect.
maybe you were a bit
rough around the edges
with a crack
here or there.
maybe your seams had come undone
and, if you still insist on being a flower,
maybe you had lost a petal or two.

but what you failed to realize
is that every rose
has thorns.

so maybe they didn't have
as many cracks as you,
as many tears as you,
as many rough edges
as you did,
but god,
they were nowhere near as pure,
nowhere near as lovely
as you were.

we wish on dandelions, dear,
because we trust them.
nobody's ever wished
on a rose,
now have they?
no.
they're too afraid
they'll get pricked,
stabbed,
betrayed.

so maybe you were
the dandelion
hidden in a garden of roses.
maybe you were the outcast,
the misfit,
the odd one out.
maybe you were just a little bit unloved,
and unfairly forgotten.

but what you failed to realize
is that i would have gladly picked you
over the brightest rose
in that silly little garden.

(a.m.)

no taste.

still, though,
cool and crisp enough
to bring about a smile.

and what a relief,
what a change of pace
to write a poem
about something that don’t deserve no poetry,

for once.

i feel a little bubble of anger,
of bitterness
at the knowledge that the words come easier when my mouth is on fire.

what the hell.
for a few seconds the cool seeds slide down easy.

no taste.

(a.m.)

long before the tides came in
and swept away our crippled romance;
long before the sun
burned up the technicolor veil on our monochrome love;
long before the heavens shook so hard
that the stars in our eyes had no choice but to fall back to the earth,
i believe we might've had something real.

and i say "might" because,
as you know,
i hate saying things with certainty.
too often,
it just ends in disappointment.

so yes,
i believe we might've had something real because,
despite all of the warning signs
forecasting our untimely demise,
you never once called me on the phone without a voice full of hope.

despite all of the monsters dragging us down
(you know the ones;
they'd hide behind my eyes
and in the corner of your brain),
you never once looked at me without a gaze of euphoria.

(i'm not a drug, though, and perhaps i should've realized that a bit sooner. maybe i could have left the battlefield without tripping over so many corpses).

to this day,
i don't really know what you saw in me
(or if you saw anything at all).
all i know is that whatever blissful light floated in the empty space between us
was bound to become corrupted by darkness,
even from the start.

still,
i stayed.
i let you feed me adoration in heavy spoonfuls,
as though i was the last lively flower in a barren field,
and you the lucky honeybee.

(i forgot, however, about the sting).

i was tired,
but i could see in your face that you never would be.

(i could also see what you'd become were i to leave -- an empty, sad shadow. nothing but carrion in a world of vultures).

i want you to know that,
at times,
i did love you.
on some days, i'd see your face and my aching heart would spring to life.
on some days, i thought i might actually be happy spending an eternity with you.

(perhaps, in a sense, i did. maybe ours was just an eternity shorter than most).

sometimes i regret not trying harder.
not for my sake, but for yours.
there are times when i try to convince myself
that you're doing just fine on your own,
that you don't need me,
that you found bigger, brighter flowers
in a field not so barren.

but then i remember the look in your eyes
on that gray afternoon in september
when you saw me packing my things
and it hit you,
like an oncoming train,
that i was leaving.

(i imagine that we both looked very much like ghosts that day,
drained of all the life once inside us).

i remember how,
for a while,
you didn't speak,
too choked up by tears.

(when you finally did say something, the voice wasn't yours. it was small and defeated and terribly confused).

i remember seeing the monsters take over again,
viciously seizing control in a manner very similar to how i imagine they had before we met.

and now, whenever i find myself thinking about you,
the first thought is always the same.

i wonder if, were i to see you walking down the street, i would recognize you, or if maybe the monsters have already made you into something else -- a man unrecognizable.

so i try not to think about you.
not too much, anyway.

every now and then, though,
your memory creeps in,
right behind my eyes,
where my monsters used to be.

and i can't help but imagine that when you think of me,
my memory climbs out from the corner of your brain,
where your monsters were.

i realize now, with certainty, that what we had was real.

but just because something is real doesn't mean it's beautiful.

(a.m.)

my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me.
she says it as though it is something
i should already know.
and when she says it,
the shift inside me is something i wish i could compare
to the grinding of tectonic plates,
if only i were strong enough to bring about an earthquake.

but since i am a stranger even to aftershocks,
i keep quiet.
my earthquake is stillborn,
expressed instead as a nod,
as a chewing of the lip,
as a silent, compliant “mhm.”
and the urge that nestles itself at the pit of my stomach
is not an urge to disagree;
it is an urge to forget.

because my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me.
she says it as though it is something i should already know,
and she says it in a way that is not meant to make me feel incomplete,
but it is a way that still does,
and if i can forget this,
even for a moment,
i can forget that i am not okay.

i do not like not being okay;
i do not like having problems,
and my psychiatrist,
she tells me i have holes in me and she says it
as though it is a problem.

and so begins a slow disintegration:
i become but a bearer of problems,
a garden growing only weeds —
something in need of fixing.
i see myself a war-torn landscape,
dry and cracked and lacking life.
i see myself the kind of ground you step on and say,
“remember when things used to grow here?
remember when it used to be green?”

i am still trying to be green,
always trying to be green,
but my psychiatrist tells me
i have holes in me,
and suddenly green becomes a color i will never know how to paint.

outside my psychiatrist’s office,
on the wall of the waiting room,
there is a painting of flowers —
irises and a geranium —
and the leaves, i know, are supposed to be green,
but the paint is old and faded
and they don’t look it.

and for a moment,
i think
that maybe,
whether iris
or geranium
or boy riddled with holes,
maybe it is possible to bloom
even if you are not green.

(a.m.)

i.

they say that when you drown,
it's nothing like in the movies;
it's silent.
there's no splashing,
no screaming,
no kicking or crying for help.

just
silence.

and i guess it's true,
for i am drowning --
there is water in my lungs,
pouring into my heart,
filling my veins and escaping from my eyes --
yet i cannot speak.

i am rendered speechless
by you.

ii.

i'm not so sure if it's
the smooth white sand
ingrained in your skin,

or the intricate seashells
that are your daintily painted
fingernails.

maybe it's the pulsing red
of a moon during high tide
that shines through
your scarlet lips,

or maybe
it's the crashing waves
filling the ocean in your eyes.

maybe it's the way you sweep me up
and pull me under,
stealing my breath,
invading my thoughts.

or maybe it's how you
are unpredictable.
you are in alliance with the erratic skies
and fickle moon,
and yet,
no one can control you,
no one can predict your next move.

iii.

i find it fascinatingly beautiful
how easy it is
for you to destroy yourself,
how you hide within raging whirlpools
and tear yourself apart from the inside.

people are afraid of the ocean,
but the ocean is a part of you.
who knows, though?
maybe you're scared of the ocean too.

iv.*

beware the girl with the ocean eyes,
for a heart that is eaten away by the sea
can never be whole again.*

(a.m.)

she said,
"don't grow up,"
and i replied,
"my darling,
it's a bit too late for that.
the fun and games
have ended.
the curtains
are closing.
the adrenaline
is fading.
the smiles
are dying.
the hearts
are breaking.
and i feel
i have lived
a thousand lifetimes,
each one lacking
a childhood."

(a.m.)

it’s interesting to think about all the right people who might’ve come into your life at the wrong time.
but then again,
i often wonder if time could’ve saved or wrecked us at all.
maybe from the start, we were destined to be nothing more than strangers.
even if i had been weighed down, glued to one spot,
nomadic tensions silenced,
it seems likely that, still, our friendly smiles and cordial jokes would’ve been
limited, somehow,
by unseen barriers,
by the cruel overseer that is fate.

i think i meant something to you, once.
not a lot, but something.
and now,
now i’m just there.
a solid. something that takes up space.
you still sit close to me,
but not as close as you did when we first met.

and i wonder, sometimes, if i did something wrong,
if there was something i could’ve done, or not done, to change things,
to make things better,
to stop us from drifting silently onto the end of the growing list of tragedies my life’s friendships have been.

but maybe there was nothing i could do.
that thought, while terrifying, is perhaps the most comforting one.
after all, it is better to be left helpless from the start than to be burdened with the knowledge that the stones you threw became part of the landslide.

i hope, maybe, that we can salvage what’s left,
perhaps even grow it into something better.
but somewhere inside, i know that’s fool’s talk.
i doubt i ever meant much to you, anyway.
i always was, and always will be, just another shadow,
another stranger,
another change of season.
i suppose i was your winter —
a barrage of snow and ice that danced in clumsily,
not bothering to think about what would happen once spring came.

i hope you’ll remember me when i’m gone.
even now, it’s nice to think that i cross your mind as much as you cross mine.
but my hopes seldom match my reality.

so, still, i am just another.
watching.
waiting.
being.
i am nothing, and in being nothing i suppose that i, too, am everything.

but i will never be your everything.

and i could say that i regret that,
but perhaps i’m still holding onto that last bit of hope.

always the optimist,
and yet even more so the pessimist.

i thought you might be both, too.
i thought we might find a way to complete one another,
much like how the land completes the sea.

but i suppose i am left the earth without its ocean,
the ground without its rain.

it’s a horrible thing, detachment.
my roots never quite find what they’re looking for in the soil.

i had just hoped you would be different.

(a.m.)

i will watch you fly,
like a migrating bird,
and i will pretend
that i didn't see a smile of relief
upon your face
or a new spark of freedom
in your eyes.

i will watch you soar,
like a roaring jet,
and i will pretend
that i didn't see the way you looked at him
or the downwards shift
in your disposition
when you realized that you were still mine.

i will watch you leap,
like a grown frog,
and i will pretend
that you are still a tadpole,
and always will be,
and will never leave.

i will watch you fly,
and i will pretend
that i have stopped loving you.

(a.m.)

grow back what he took from you;

you lie at depths he will never be able to fully reach.

(a.m.)

this is an alphabet of all the people
who have dug holes in me,
and of all the people
who are still digging.

this is a gardening guide
for would-be lovers and pretty faces
who do not even realize
that they are carrying shovels.

this is a weather forecast written
from past experience,
a reminder that winter
is not kind on crops,
no matter how firmly you pack the dirt.

this is me,
reflecting on seeds planted.

this is me,
reflecting on seeds left to die.

A,
i suppose it is fitting that the first letter
is also the first person to show me what it is like
to have seedlings sprouting up from inside you,
the first person to show me just how deep you really have to dig
to make the sting last.
you never came back to water what you planted.

H,
i’d like to say to that i ripped out your roots with my own two hands;
i’d like to give myself some credit in all this.
you don’t look as lovely as you used to.
you say i’ve grown distant.
i’m sorry.

J,
you always feel like being on the verge of something big.
you feel like summer, like a deep purple,
a bath of darkness.
you are everywhere that plants do not grow well.
and i have always felt — and still do feel — 
that that is such a grave injustice.
still, though you cannot speak the word “devotion,”
i beckon for more seeds.

P,
my greatest heartbreak.
heartbreak, though, is but a flesh wound when seen from afar.
and so i thank god for the miles between us.
i can feign forgetfulness when you are far away.
after all, what is a shovel in your hands if those hands cannot reach me?

S,
you are but a bud waiting to bloom.
and yet again i find myself so very afraid of growth.

(a.m.)

perhaps i make
too many metaphors
about the ocean.

but i can't help
but compare you to a wave,

for each time i've almost got you,
you recede back to whence you came,

into the tide.

(a.m.)

my father carries his grandmother's wisdom with him
like a satchel upon his back,
like a palm print;
his own father’s teachings tug like strings
and read like a map worn but never wrong —
one that transcends.

my father knows how to live for himself
for the sake of others.
a hidden art form —
secretive to his son
who only knows how to live for others
for the sake of himself.

i could ask him how he does it,
but he tells me first that i will live and learn and hurt and grow,
and so i know, instead, that i will come to know.

my father carries me in his arms as though i am still one day old,
as though i am still taking my first few tiny gasps of air from this great big world
(the world he built for me),
as though my eyes have not yet become accustomed to the light.

my father’s arms never tire and i know why.
they are satchel and palm print,
strings and map.

i am one day old and sure that my father has lived a thousand lifetimes.
he speaks in bloodlines, holds heritage in his hands and then brings it to his head when it whispers.
like a child holding a shell to his ear, listening to the ocean.
my father knows where to find right answers.

i could ask him how he does it,
but he is already answering.

he has always been answering.

(a.m.)

i find it hard now to make excuses for why i haven't let you go.
mere words are tripwires.
(how can i call you a piece of my past when you are still so very present?).
i am no longer as eloquent as i used to be.

i find it hard now to make excuses for why i still stand at your door.
it has been four months, and just as soon, twelve.
(each morning i wake with hopes that your grip will have loosened).
i am no longer as strong as i used to be.

but perhaps it does take a strange type of strength to be so hopeful,
to think that someday,
even after all this,
you might see in me even a fraction of what i see in you.

truthfully, that is all i ever wanted.

but often, the things we want require change we cannot bring.

i have spent so long trying to make my valleys into mountains,
but sometimes the earth does not want to be moved.

//

i have given up on excuses;
i will drag you along and wait.
someday i will tire of holding your hand so tightly.

(a.m.)

I asked,
Begged,
Pleaded
For you to stop.
But the truth of the matter was
You were a train without brakes;
You couldn't be stopped
Until you ran out of tracks to guide you.
And even then,
You would go on,
Soaring recklessly until you,
Inevitably,
Crashed and burned
And lost all the wonder you once had.

And the day I realized this
Was the same day
I stopped asking,
Stopped begging,
Stopped pleading
For you to stop.

Because this was the day
I realized
That a broken, unsteady,
Out of control train like you
Stops for no one.

(a.m.)

i.
i feel you in my bones sometimes,
on those nights when the silence screams almost as loud as your lingering words,
when the portrait of you is stitched onto my aching eyelids,
thrown together in a mass of lazy brushstrokes from a dark palette.

ii.
i light cigarettes,
but i don't smoke them.
i just watch them burn out.
fade.
crumble.
like we did, endless eons ago.

iii.
it's clear to me now that,
like the land and the sky,
you and i were simply never meant to meet,
never destined to touch.

iv.
sometimes,
i can bring myself not to feel so hollow,
if i think of the better days,
when your smile wasn't a façade
and your love for me was a looming oak
in this great big forest of daft, dying weeds.

v.
but it's not worth much, anyway,
because the truth
is that your smile shines
just about as bright as the stars in the big city,
and your love for me
snaps
like a silly little twig.

vi.
in all honesty,
we never were,
we just tried to be.

vii.
you know,
i walk endless roads trying to forget you.

viii.**
it doesn't work.

(a.m.)

it's nice to know that you think of me sometimes.
that my name forms on the tip of your tongue.
that i cross your mind.

it's nice to know that sometimes you might see something that reminds you of me.
it's nice to know that i'm still there,
that i haven't disappeared or gone silent in your head.

it's nice to know that i still matter,
even if it's only in the slightest bit.

after all, that's all i ever wanted.

(a.m.)

sometimes,
often times,
i am cold.
there is snow within me and wild winds outside my door,
and i watch from the window while my crops wither.

i silence the sun.

he stands at my gate with nimble fingers and begs to be let in,
but i have always been a grove of shadows,
and he knows there is no space for him.

sometimes,
often times,
i am cold.

but other times,
spring finds me.
it lifts me up into its gentle arms and suddenly i am a field of clovers,
lucky,
rising up.
suddenly i am baby’s breath, i am pure,
i am a blooming hyacinth.

i am warm.

i know what a change in season feels like.

and i try to be loving.
but on the days when i have gotten up
and planted my seeds,
you are still tangled in thick black weeds and roots.
on the days when i am a rose,
you are the thorns,
and on the days when i grant the sun a chance to speak,
you take his tongue.

i know your pain; i have lived it.
but i will not give up my songbirds just because you are only left with crows.

i know what a change in season feels like,
but you are always winter.
and sometimes, i am spring.

so i will flourish.
and i am sorry.

(a.m.)

don't dress like a *****,
                                            but remember: your success is based upon how much of your *** they see.

stand up for yourself,
                                            but remember: use the wrong tone, and your husband will beat you.

have fun,
                                            but remember: going out alone and drinking will only end up with you in a stranger's bed the next morning.

make sure you never have to rely on your man for money,
                                            but remember: someone will probably steal your purse while you're out alone.

"no" means "no,"
                                            but remember: you always have to give him what he wants.

**** isn't the victim's fault,
                                            but remember: you were asking for it.

it's your life. it's your body.
                                            but remember:
                                                      ­           it's not.


                                                        ­                                                               (a.m.)

simply put,
i want to hold you in that evanescent moment
during the formation of a thought, of an utterance;
the moment between not knowing what to say or think
and expressing it in perfect clarity.
the moment when, despite the words still being tangled up,
hidden in a fog,
the thought is still clear.
the moment when the words are forming, bubbling, exploding into life on the tip of your tongue,
but you have not yet set them free.

i want to hold you in this moment of beautiful silence,
of unspoken understanding,
of connecting through thoughts not yet complete,
and words not yet said.

a timeless instant,
a short-lived forever.

(a.m.)

for a moment i couldn’t remember your last name.
for a moment it started with a different letter,
was spoken in a different tongue.
for a moment i had forgotten it — that is, if i ever knew it at all.

you used to be so clear to me.
you were, at a time, tangible —
so much more than a memory.
i loved you then and i could say that i love you now but
you cannot love a memory.
not in the same way, no.
you cannot talk to a memory,
nor laugh with a memory,
nor live with a memory.

and so i keep you
frozen in time,
a fragment of the past.

like ashes in an urn i put you on the shelf,
never to be disturbed,
only to be put on display.
i thought you’d be safe there.
i thought that the ashes in an urn don’t disappear because
what more can ash crumble down to?

but today,
for just a moment,
i couldn’t remember your last name.
today,
for just a moment,
you slipped away.

and now i wonder if i ever had you at all.

(a.m.)

you are leaving again.
i find myself saddened without tangible reason.
and i know that with my sadness should come some joy,
and if not joy, 
then relief,
because when you are half the world away,
it becomes just a bit easier
to forget the times when you were so painfully closer.
i can look up at the moon — a pale phantom sliver —
and know that you do not gaze upon it at that same time.
in that moment,
the moon is mine.
i do not mind that the sun rises for you
so long as i cannot see it.
so i should breathe easy;
your absence gives me a little more room to love myself.

and yet —
there is always an “and yet” with you — 
when the easier breathing begs for entrance to my lungs,
i turn it away.
to forget you would mean to forgo grieving,
and god knows i live for a good ache.

so i think of you,
faultless in the dim yellow glow.
images i shouldn't call upon.
small, soft moments when you seemed to see me.
i remember the time when you crowned me with a halo, deemed me an angel.
i imagine that you are the only one who could ever make me believe that i fit the part.

glowing.
i don't know if you were but i was.
glowing.
if we have to share the moon, then so be it.

i find myself saddened without tangible reason.
this is the part where you come in.

but you are leaving again.
i could ask myself if you were ever truly "here,"
but it always hurts the most to ask the questions i already know the answers to.
so i think, instead,
of you,
faultless in the dim yellow glow.
the pain is a little bit more bearable.
i imagine that maybe you were glowing, too.

(a.m.)

i had a friend once,
and she taught me
not to say "i love you too,"
because it sounds false and inauthentic,
and little white lies are worse than the cold, hard
truth.

i had a friend once,
and she taught me
that you don't have to do anything;
it's simply a matter of whether you should
or shouldn't.

i had a friend once,
and she lived in a small, boring town
with small boring people.

i had a friend once,
and she was not a small, boring person.

i had a friend once,
and she hated herself,
every last inch of her,
but she still always knew
how to make me smile.

i had a friend once,
and she would always reference books
or music
or movies,
because to her,
the real world just wasn't as appealing.

i had a friend once,
and i left her.

she stayed.

she waited.

i'm sure her hope wavered at times,
but she waited still.

and i came back,
only to leave again.

she didn't stick around this time, though.

so, you see,
i had a friend once,
and she taught me
to think deeply,
to live freely,
and to love truly.

i had a friend once.

she's gone now.

(a.m.)

in the early morning hum,
in the beat of the drum of the white noise and the misplaced light, i
treasure you.
the sole familiar thing.

an old, cloying taste
clings to my mouth.
i think you are sleeping.
i know? you are sleeping.
i awoke to silence filled by your silence.
i know you are sleeping;
i felt loved by your silence, still.

i know this is love i imagine for myself in the ways i need it most;
i know how this goes.

in the early morning hum,
in the beat of the drum of the white noise and the misplaced light,
i allow myself to feel a very real fear that you
will be everything i needed
and almost everything i want.

and so in preparation,
a separation:
i shift and twitch and shiver until i am at once here
and not,
until i am at once here
and in the moment,
some way down the line,
that old, cloying taste magnified,
when all comes to pass as i knew it would and i can say
“i knew it would.”
i know how this goes.

you take the morning bus to secaucus,
and i, the one to new york.
when sleep greets me and leans my head
gently
against the window pane,
i will let it come.
i will let it try to fill your absence
in ways i know to be short-lived, for naught,
but i will let it try.

i will miss you when i wake up,
miss the silence that i thought you crafted for me,
but which was really just
silence.
i will miss you when i wake up as i miss you when you are next to me.
i want, for us, something infinite:
that which we cannot have and which you do not want,
hard as i wish you did.

but.
the sun rises —
i know how this goes —
and the misplaced light finds its place again.
the silence i thought you crafted for me, which was really just
silence,
becomes noise.
hectic. colorful without order.
i will miss you when i wake up,
but what ache is strong enough to pull something personal
from all that noise?

you take the morning bus to secaucus,
and somewhere in new york i try to live a life as though you have already left me.
if i had my way,
hopeful, futile grasps towards the infinite would not hold ample weight for a haunting.

and yet,
that old, cloying taste.

still.

(a.m.)

i.
hearing your name still fills me with a certain intoxicating sweetness.

ii.
i hate you. god, i hate you so much. but i love you. please come back.

iii.
i'm sorry that it had to end up like this. i don't think you care, though.

iv.
it's okay if you've lost your innocence. i've lost mine, too. life will do that to people.

v.
i was often happiest when you said my name like maybe i meant something to you.

vi.
i am stuck between wanting to forget you and wanting to crawl back to you.

vii.
most of my poems are still about you, even now.

viii.
i hope you're doing okay.

ix.
please don't forget me.

x.**
thank you.

step one:
do not look at their mouth,
for you will expect to see rivers flowing from it,
poetry slipping through the space between their lips
in the same way that the wind slips through the space underneath a door,
but instead you will only see spit and saliva
and a tongue too big for its home.

step two:
do not look at their hands,
for you will expect them to craft cities from marble right before your very eyes,
but instead it will be just the thumbs,
the twiddling of thumbs,
the aimlessness, the senselessness,
the lack of experience with building empires.

step three:
do not look at their eyes,
for they say that the eyes are the windows to the soul,
and when you see that the curtains have been drawn,
you will feel so very alone.

step four:
i did not love you.
you have to repeat it.
i did not love you.
i did not love you.
i did not love you;
i loved what i thought you would be.
i thought you would be eden,
but you were only the apple.

step five:
i suppose i am to blame here
for digging holes too big to fill,
for crafting shoes too big to fit in.
and for that i am sorry.
i am sorry that i expected more from you
than i even expect from myself.

step six:
human.
human.
let the word roll off and around your tongue,
let it cover every inch of the inside of your mouth.
say it. over and over again.
say it. like it is foreign and you need to know what it means.
say it.
and when you have said it enough times and it feels
dull, old,
disappointing,
you will know that we are nothing more than flesh and bone,
and that as much as we wish there were gods among us,
flesh always rots in the end.
this is the beast of truth that we cannot outrun.
hands cannot craft cities from marble
if only given clay.

step seven:**
do not let this frighten you.
clay, after all,
was meant for molding.

(a.m.)

i don't get so sad anymore, you know.
and sometimes i wish i could go back and do things better,
do things right,
but something in me knows it was supposed to end when it did.

you've changed, anyway.

i don't want to say that you're not the person i once knew,
because i'm sure that deep down, somewhere in there, you are,
but i'm a tired person,
and i lack the energy required
to dig down so deep through skin and bone
trying to find the worn out shards of a memory;
the last pieces of the first person to make me feel so terribly alive.

//

i hope you're happy.
i have always hoped that you would be happy.

but i don't get so sad anymore,
and i don't want to linger on the past.

(still i write poems about you, simply for the sake of writing).

//

every now and again,
i'll think about you,
you and everything and everyone else who shaped me.

and it's hard to believe it's been two years.

and it's hard to believe that i have grown,
but i have,
and the truth is that i don't need you anymore.

//

i don't get so sad anymore, you know.
things have gotten better.
you're gone and you don't care and i sometimes wonder if you ever did, but i'm telling you anyway that things have gotten better because i want to prove to myself that it was right to let you go,
that i needed to let you go to finally be free.

you made me feel alive in a way that tugged at my heart with a surprising aggression,
but i deserve better than that.

(a.m.)

no.
no.
no.

i want to tell myself
that it's not love,
that it's not happening
all over again.

but what other explanation is there?

when you're near,
my heart skips a beat,
jumping up
like a newly rigged boat,
riding on opal waves.

when you leave,
my heart sinks
like a defeated ship
in the middle of your hurricane.

when we talk,
i am a sailor,
and you,
you are a siren,
luring me in with your captivating songs.

dangerous,
yet beautiful.

but i'll never be the one for you.

no.

instead,
i will always be the hopeful ship
that you inevitably sink.

instead,
those opal waves
will always turn
to black tides
ripping through the sands
of my heart.

instead,
your words will be my addiction,
my high,
my rush,
and
my eventual downfall.

instead,
i will admire you from afar,
after having been hurt once
by your songs.

dangerous,
yet beautiful.

i guess, my dear,
that's why they say
to stay away from sirens.

(a.m.)

sometimes i think
that if, perhaps,
i could shrink myself down into something a bit more beautiful,
then maybe you would love me.

in the ugly, unafraid, truth-telling part of my mind,
the part i seldom dare to visit,
i know this is not true,
know that you could never love me,
not now.

i can make myself,
as much as i like,
into wood to be whittled,
but i cannot make you crave those carvings.

you can lead a horse to water,
or whatever it is that they say.

but i fear i will always be a well run dry in your eyes
(or perhaps one that never had water to begin with).

so i combat this fear in the only way i know how:
by turning away from it,
pretending it does not exist.

by shrinking.

and sometimes,
sometimes,
when you don't seem as far away,
i think that if, perhaps,
i could shrink myself down into something a bit more beautiful,
then maybe you would love me.

(a.m.)

tonight, darkness engulfs,
as it usually does.
the sun hides its shame behind the light of the moon,
only to rise with renewed power in the morning.

i find myself wishing i could speak to the sun.

if i could,
i'd ask it to stay down,
to linger in its dormancy,
to grant me the luscious solitude of the night
for just a little while longer.

because for once i am okay.

for once, i find my mind quiet --
knowing all the things that are painful to know,
and yet not holding too tight to them.

and i enjoy it,
this silence -- of mind and of world.
but i am not naive,
and i know that the sun will not spare me,
will not spare anyone,
nor will it give so much as a whisper
in response to all my feeble wishes.

so for tonight,
all i have is tonight.

all i have are the few sunken hours before dawn
when i can be at least somewhat free --
freer than i've been for a long while.

and that, though momentary,
is enough.

(a.m.)

i wish my words could reach you
because maybe then
you would open your eyes
and see
that you deserve every compliment you get,
and that you are a product of the gods;
that the sun's gentle kisses have seeped into your bones,
and that stardust is in your veins;
that your blood is divine and oceanborn,
and that your skin is the sand of that very same ocean;
that your eyes are vortexes of mystery and desire,
and that your smile is the planets aligning;
that your mind is a beautiful enigma;
and that you are simply
miraculous.

but i don't think my words reach you,
and, honestly,
i'm not sure they ever will.

but in the meantime,
just remember that your skin is the sand,
and that the blood of the ocean doesn't deserve to be spilled.

just remember that your eyes are vortexes,
and that they don't deserve the tears that so often fill them.

and,
if you will,
just remember that i love you.

(a.m.)

but i will.
i will write it and it may take me
five minutes
or it may take me fifty.
and neither of the two is an absurdly long amount of time,
unless you really think about it.
because five measly minutes
is just the same
as three hundred seconds.
and three hundred seconds
is just the same
as three hundred thousand milliseconds.

we've only just covered one-tenth of an entire fifty minutes,
yet already we have before us
three hundred thousand intricate units of time,
each lasting for the blink of an eye -- no, less --
then vanishing,
like the evanescent remains of a flame
that has been reduced
to first sparks,
then dull embers,
then ashes.

the funny part about it is that you never know
what each tiny little bubble of time might hold,
what might happen when it forms,
or when it pops.

a millisecond is incredibly short,
almost unfairly so.

but three hundred thousand milliseconds?

it can't be said what could happen as those fleeting fractions
slip away.

we may try to grab hold of them,
to catch them in our palms.

but time stops for no one.

so you may find yourself
with empty, bleeding palms,
as a reminder that time is harsh, cruel,
tyrannical.

and as you wrap bandages around your wounds
(or maybe not),
those fleeting milliseconds
will laugh with sudden bursts of cynicism,
like fireworks,
deafeningly silent.

they will laugh
at what a fool you were,
thinking you could catch time
in the palms of your hands.

(a.m.)