remember i'm awful in love with you

some thoughts were never meant to be penned

she lies prone, hair loose like a beautiful witch
humming that haunting little melody to herself
a decade since her heart strings vibrated to that tune

memory terrorism, he called it, but how delightful
it is to indulge when everything is quiet except
the friction of your ribs expanding and contracting
against the ground, and he was the only one
who knew the pleasurable rush of breathing
like that

fractal, ever-splintering

one line tangent to the
opium smoke you burn incessantly
and his accustomed eyes don't get smoky,
his vessels immune to red,
ears to your mantras tune in, tune out
at the same time

a split self

one vector pierces right through you when
you're not looking and there's something
rabid about that bite that makes you want
to bite back knowing
you only have forty days before
complete intoxication and thoughts of water
and drowning

a circle
marked by salt around the edges,
salt and vulnerability
make the land fertile and barren
at the same time

exile

Some wounds don't heal

Silent tears over potholes and you hope no one will see
these strangers you will sleep with in the heat in the dark
will not see your eyes as long as you suffocate them away
with a pillow and breathe slowly, deeply, as not to sniffle
over these overstarched cotton sheets, not beaten hard enough
against audacious, gaudy painted concrete, fraying at the edges
in this rural dream where you blister in the shade

not a move, be still, let these little creeks find their way past your crows' feet
and tingle at the soft and tender fruit of your earlobe

Some wounds don't heal

They make you resort to salt and honey until you have forgotten
pleasure, grown numb to a rigmarole of english muffins enshrined in
too-bright, too-reflective plastic that you pitch
into a trash can overfilled with shells of melons and
spiky pineapple progeny that none of the men bother
to empty and you wonder how you ended up the only woman
in this mosquito-infested palace of illusions
and you lock your door and you don't come out at night because you don't trust
these strangers you will sleep with in the heat in the dark
will not see your eyes as long as you suffocate them away

Some wounds don't heal

Ending

Some smiles are too much to bear in color

Her upturned lips over a griddle of roasting tomatoes
and peppers and the sound of running water
and slurring shouting Christmas
drunks and the smell, the texture of
dust and smoke and sticky children

But her eyes
her eyes are euphemisms
"a coconut dropped on my head"
swelling where a human hand struck
"he's working far away"
a no-show on a holiday with plump spherical supermarket grapes
for another woman
"everything's in God's hands"
the spirits of the young dead
hover unintentionally
cruelly

Only those who have wept bitterly over injustice
recognize the dull before the sparkle

I made her smile black and white to help everyone see

"She looks so happy!" you told me,
and I fell out of love with you

five of swords reversed

The hopeless romantic in you died
a strange death: the power went out
and in the dark she rummaged
through the cabinet under the sink--
clasping an old sponge, a container
of silver polish, a rubber glove, and finally,
the waxy frame of a candle saved for
those rare, dark occasions.

The hopeless romantic bumped her head
as she rose from hands and knees
and muttering disgruntled nothings
under her breath, she struck a match,
cautiously inched up the stairs,
fell asleep,
and vanished.

Sometimes you thought you saw her ghost
floating around the fireplace, hovering
behind those old brown curtains, but anytime
she caught your eye, you'd blink her away.

You learned not to blink, but she
learned to disappear.

You made it through anger, denial,
you bargained, you cast off the fog of
depression and you accepted
she was gone

and then she came back.
And, bumpy head intact, she tried to seduce you,
and you were not so sure you wanted her
anymore.

Ya lo perdí

A list of things you couldn't recall:
the name of the first love song (an ironic canary in the mine)
a string of prepositions at the end of a sentence
(that still makes you laugh)

The power to be a muse lies dormant

How far one must dig
through piles of crumpled up paper
wadded up yellow sheets lined with pink and blue
some within, some near misses from a gray trashcan
that tripped you over in a physics classroom

and digital reminders of our embarrassing pasts
those images
those letters
those mp3s
you thought you deleted

Latent inspiration is an engram

And a trip down memory lane
that once filled you with shame
makes you whole again

Daydreams

That blue summer dream whispers itself in your ear

She leaves her thoughts hanging on your lower lip
and it is so weighed down that you look perpetually paused
as if searching for words

That blue summer dream whispers itself in your ear
and you wonder if that's what's tickling you or if
it's only your imagination reveling in its own cruelty

The smoggy sunset, the witty words like ping pong balls
bouncing back and forth between practiced hands
that never tire of their paddles.
Somehow, because your eyes have locked,
because your weary bodies find respite from
the isolating worlds that constantly threaten to engulf you
in each other's arms,
because your selective memories pretend
terrible things have not happened,
terrible things that you yourself have carved in stone
with chisels and mallets on the hearts of the innocent,
you two still find love
and overlooking the squalor, the misery, the crime, the poverty
etched into the city streets,
you two find the world perfect
in an ironic and nauseating way.

That blue summer dream whispers herself in your ear
and rests her finger in the small of your back where only lovers
dare to go
and your eyes dilate
and her lips graze your earlobe
and you tremble wishing
you didn't want more

only when she slips away
does the salt stir the intelligence of the raw bleeding wounds
she has left everywhere
she touched you