DON'T CARE WORDS

i sometimes say things

mean things

scathing brillo pad words

don't care words.

i have learned to stop accepting the consequences.

if you don't care, you can't be hurt, you can't be embarrassed.

above all else, there is no shame in the morning twilight

that brand new day: quiet, precious, bearing scars from a time it never knew.

there is no disgrace weighing your eyelids down at the moment when you wake up barely breathing. lead lungs pumping.

blood turns lava hot.

so much shame.

aged eighteen

nineteen

twenty

twenty one

twenty two

twenty three.

time to forgive.
forget.

time to be just selfish enough to watch yourself hurt someone else, cross a boundary, fuck things up.

cracked little teeth, bleeding gums, dried up hearts, bruised vitals.

so much pain that you'll never feel.

you learn to be the demon that your mother, in her eleventh hour before your birth felt, terrified, by herself, worried about creating.

you

feel nothing.

TODAY, TOMORROW, AND EVERYDAY AFTER THAT

wide awake but eyes shut tight

sheets smelling like liquorice root,

"rabbit, rabbit".

First words out of her mouth.

Her mother wakes up early, by an hour and a half.

sneaks outside, has a smoke, unfurls her mind.

Ever since she was twenty years old she hated morning encounters.

she breathes heavy, laborious, large intake of air- pushed out of bed

to standing.

each morning stooping, back curving like a sicle.

each day weighing a little more.

her grandmother wakes up, never thinking

about anything but whether the cat shat in the garden.

occupations

and priorities- are everyone's prerogative.

each of them mine,

these morning routines.

For today

tomorrow

and everyday after that.

GHOST PHONE

there was you:

rode past, rode back, mid sentence, i ate my words.

three months of silence unveiled just by you stopping by.

on the porch. five minutes too soon to eat the tart warming in the oven

and infinity minutes

waiting for you to call me back.

and you: 

you had to have seen someone tonight.

all golden headed and fragile, crushing egg shell egos

potentially not even knowing 

your own strength.

but i don't resent you,

it's just that it's quarter to ten, and maybe i didn't know what i was getting into.

you can't win when you're being careful-- 

long thought processes/laborious answers.

you can't win when you're going breakneck neither-- 

eyes shut tight/reckless decisions.

and me:

i'm still here.

i'm still going to be here in may, june, july. august smells like leaving

sort of dusty and brand new at the same time.

going steady side to side;

cracking chicken bones to suck the marrow.

i just sit close to the window

because when i  hear the sounds of small tinny voices

i always hope it's you,

coming over to see me.

and when i pretend i hear footsteps coming up the stairs,

i always look up, breath held short. heart strings tied in bows.

HE SAID

all of my imagining

could never compare

to the bountiful reality

that is your naked body.

UNTITLED

unwound, bristled, braided.

i wish with my seafarers blood i could tie knots.

i would produce entire books, volumes!

of knots meant to tie and untie. help and hinder.

  i find so many knots to untangle

i find so many knots to tighten   

i wish with my seafarers blood i could learn their names.

i would call them out as i wind them into

infinite pieces of string.

BLINDSIDED

your eyes didn't look so blue last night.

i stare: magnolias blooming and just to the right, the neighbor gardening.

everything is in exclamations (!)

this coffee is so good!

i will carve driftwood!

little acupuncture words insert themselves into my head.

we spent at least two hours extra in bed. falling asleep, waking up, waking each other up.

little finger swords swipe, make light marks.

I stare

looking at the feathers tacked to my wall and

knowing that when your eyes drift open

you see me

see me partially seeing everything else.

hair all matted, nipples chaffed.

when you bike away:

after ambiguous plans not plans not able to make plans i stare.

okay.

okay, let's go to lighthouse park.

STINGING NETTLES

you don't remember i want to shake you say it happened!

star eyed pine cone people saw it too.

no one cares except me.