eye-oh

perched on my heels

sitting in the yellow corner of
someone else's kitchen I'll find
quiet moments to look at your teeth
assess your outfit
chopped visions like
when we were both 14 but at least
six years apart. Why
is every one who is 21
sweeping in to the world with shoulders
straight and teeth so white. I
will continue to assess this SEXTROLOGY
book and
scrape the last noodles off
of a thick take-out plate oh and
you have really nice skin, i
notice. is everyone else noticing
my lack of and someone else is
likely roosting down for bed, feeling so
proud of their tiny daughter who is
not this daughter
born of colliding blood and a formed double helix
we can barely see each other now
through two door frames,
it is just the slight curve of your small foot
and perfect jeans. you sit to finish the puzzle
someone else laid out on their dining room table
long before,
either of us dared to
exist on this night

Per

eager, quick fingers.
we ran off to the woodshed-
to hunt for our needs.
//
four shy, bovine eyes
chart out a course of action
we breathe deep. Move close.
//
mouths sweet and clumsy.
dropped like the stone of a fruit,
tongues root and blossom.

IN MY THIRD YEAR OF BEING A ZOMBIE

i know something about hospitals.

dry eyes, tight throat. picking at my cuticles.

I have fear every time i wake up and see a missed call

or text message on my phone. 
“you have to come down on the first bus” “can you fly out there?” 
“Tell work it’s a family emergency” 
All the headaches.

I have body pains like boa constrictors

in my shoulders shifting and squeezing

all the muscles. I have been trying to notice, how my body defaults to tense.

do you know? how many times in a day

I roll my shoulders back, take a deep breath. I was not breathing before

this. I didn't used to be destroyed.

I walk around with my mind in hospitals.

knives that cut through tissue of infants. Removing bones. Little limp bodies on metal tables. Pale faces

look at you like you betrayed them. Too young to know it’s to save their lives. Once,

we spent days getting excited about going on an airplane

only to have her two year old body shake with fury, scream. 
“i’ve been tricked” 
because

the stale glow of the airport lights are too similar

to the hospital’s.

I can speak of

straps that hold the wrists of grown men. Panicking. blood boiling. and doctors who
“won’t give that junkie any post-op pain killers.” I walk in the room, look in his eyes.Gaze past the new stitches and

cotton mouth

to see someone with my flesh and my bones. It is only that his brain

failed him so gallantly. but his heart

still beats as lovingly as always.

I know long rides on the bus. And my face pressed on the cold glass. somber trips to

see people on the edge.

My phone rang today.

My granny.

curtains of blood rushing out of her face and

“her heart”

and

“failure”

and

I already start planning how to tell work it’s

“a family emergency”.

I consider, what it means to feel stress.
What do you believe a crisis is? 
What is enough to make you cry?

I have crippled myself, through hospitals.

I would never.

i can not.

i do.

I am.

i am so angry.

I am so angry.

I am so angry.

I AM NOT A BEAR

how earnestly

we sew. tight

stitches traversing up

where the spine would have been.

inside this skin it is

clotted, hot blood of some other animal.

how embarrassing to be caught

wearing another's fur.

despite the multitude of

dense layers of hair,

it all just feels so threadbare.

FREETRAPPER

they're born
strong head, narrow hipped
from dense black soil and
mineral deposits
hot silver, crusted
rock debris

reminiscent of thick pelts
red skies
morning dew
dark pools.
with a cracked pepper zeal
they come forth
a new
anew.

to form soft tendrils of
liberated
unfurling,
into
snaked roots

and wild depth,
of which we know no bounds.

memories of damage #1

there are, no lights
when my eyes open. Except
the hushed blue
from atop the garage door.

clotted/throbbing/shifted
indigo leaks onto bone and
I immediately notice the jagged pain of
a metal
can, cracked in half
between two vertebrae.
I am showered in it's thick liquid;
warm sugar dripping down my neck.

they left!
panicked, before I was
re-submerged by the darkness.
unconscious.
nothing but August night air hitting the train tracks and
coyote calls around me.
body pressed to concrete
bike left untamed.

I remember the view.
railings of the loading dock,
my feet above me,
backpack straps,
bicycle splayed sideways on
the narrow slope of grass,
night sky obscured by
tops of warehouses.

I cry out.
thick layers of skin lost
from my palms, my knees.
helmet digging into my chin
swollen.
a sense of loss
embarrassment
disgust.
where was I? Alone, and
betrayed by my own actions of which
i still can not remember
to this day.

you must stand, now. I said
to myself. Out loud and
gently.
my mind gaps
on how i lumbered to my bike
wheeled the damaged steed around the corner
stopped.
street lamps
and another coyote howl.
Someone was waiting for me there.
I collapsed. supported.
someone to hold my
body, tender like
bruised roses.

HOW I LOST MY WAY, OR: AN ODE TO NOODLE PETE

i track murmured words
and lines of sight.
watch you gaze to
the horizon,
the speaker,
the cold air, is
what finally makes you blink.

there is often comfort in
unknowing.
in feeling around in the dark. let
fingers do the work.
squeeze biceps,
rub necks,
the cashmere, is
what finally makes them rest.

(they had caught two foals,
two wild young stallions which
kicked and reared and bit and
struggled frantically to free themselves as
Birk and Ronia tried to tie each of them to a tree.)

It's too much in the mornings, you know?
so many hasty steps to take and
rosemary bushes to count. I'll
stop to pick up feathers,
bluster at the grey skies,
your gullied smile, is
what keeps one foot in front of the other.

I need a deep breath because i realize
the awkward growing pains of those
stretches,
pauses

of

time

 manifesting as inches of
space, between us.