Someday I Will Stop Being Young

Someday I will stop being young and getting stupid tattoos. There are 4 people in my house. We each have different personalities. I cut my hair over the bathroom sink with old scissors and everything I own smells of coffee shops or fresh lavender. 

There is a banner on my side that says ”Make Art Not War" and there's a confederate flag on the opposite wall that doesn't belong to me. We sit around the kitchen floor with our socks on and argue about the compost pile and Karl Marx and the necessity of violence when The Rev comes. Whatever the fuck The Rev means.
 

Every time my best friend laughs I want to grab him by the shoulders and shout “Grow old with me and never kiss me on the mouth!” I want us to spend the next 80 years together eating Doritos and taking night drives. I want to be Oscar the Grouch. I want him and his girlfriend to be Bert and Ernie. I want us to live on Sesame Street and I will park my trash can on their front stoop and we will be friends every day. If I ever seem grouchy it’s just because I am a little afraid of all that fun.


There is a river running through this city I know as well as my own name. It’s the first place I’ve ever called home besides a few people's arms. Somedays I think I'm on the Truman Show and everyone is part of some cosmic joke. I don’t think its poetry to say I’m in love with the rain. I don’t think it’s poetry to say I’m in love with the knots of your hair. I don’t think it’s blasphemy to say that certain clouds look like Jesus.
 I think secrets need to be kept in shoeboxes and that some letters are never supposed to be sent.

There is always wine asking to be slurped on front porches.
 There are always crushed packs of those candy stick cigarettes in my back pockets. I have been wearing the same patterned shorts and listening to the same 5 minute and 27 second song for 10 days
. Someday I will stop being young and getting stupid tattoos.

Armour

I stood at the foot of my father's grave, watching the beetles march west. Their shiny black armour of bodies, warriors with steel backs, carrying the ones that were lost, bringing them home to be eaten. Praising the things of the past, cherishing the fall of their brothers, because even the dead could be of service. Vines and grass started to creep up the headstone, so I started to pull away the residue of time passed- and the only thing I could think about was if this is how we'll all be forgotten. 

Serafin

I can see the way you move on her
The way you put your large identical hands on her sides
and your thumbs tapping like a drum on the bones that stick out
I can feel the sweat that you drown in as you work,
as you glide over her, through her
She's looking at you, you're not looking at her with those eyes that pierce,
with those eyes that tell stories
Those grey sheets don't know any better, but you do
She grabs your neck but her hands don't fit like mine do
Her hands don't fit at all but she thinks she knows you
I know she doesn't know how to make you shiver,
how to make your hands laugh, how to make you collapse
with one touch and a stroke
You can't say her name because our syllables match
and mine are screaming
She doesn't taste the residue of peanut butter that's always there
as she kisses you, but she tastes my name
She only knows one thing that I do not;
If you broke into that thin smile that melts me down,
as you finish what you never really started

Good night, sweet girl

A bird sat in her hand, fidgety like herself. She stroked the little lively thing from the top of its head to its tail feathers. Sitting atop a tree branch in the moonlight, she could see it had maroon feathers- like her marooned heart.  The type of bird was unclear to her, it was too dark to be a cardinal and too light to be a finch, maybe it was an oriole. She suspected it was a male bird because of its eyes, they were far more round than a female's. He cocked his head at her, slightly to the left as she ran her fingers down his sides. It was almost a puzzled look, as if it did not know her intentions for fear that she might just pluck his feathers off in one swift motion- like picking the wings off flies. The bird started to walk up her forearm and as he did so, she noticed a limp in its walk. The girl with wispy brown hair was so curious as to what caused the limp, but knew that it was one of those things that had to be left unsaid. Perhaps it was because of another bird, she would not know. The bird made it way up to her left shoulder with his little limp, passing to look at the place her heart would be. He looked up to her face, and she listened to the bird's eyes. They were bold and large, shifting left and right slowly, a dance she had seen in other's eyes before- a dance she had done herself. She thought about picking the bird up off of her shoulder and forcing it back to her hand, back to safety- but she was too late. The feathered thing spread its wings and she could see all the different shades of grey and red she had not seen before, the way the value of the hues bled together to become one. So it leapt, and then it flew, without any provocation and onto its next shoulder. It was there she learned that there was no way, no thing she could do to hang on to something that wanted to leave.

Crowbars

Deft hands and a new disc
under the needle,
static bridges
Trail of fine material
No trail of
tears
Lithe whispers tangling
satin red sheets
Beat, beat
thundering, there it is
Crescent curves
everywhere
She smiles back with
her eyes
His hands laugh,
calloused inside
Uncovering,
layer by layer
so illuminated,
the shadows are
long
Piano keys
down his spine,
words too
There it is again,
jagged
Fingers sprinting,
he sees something
hiding
No pry yet
Hall light seeps,
smoke sinking into
skin
But it's not the
only thing sinking
Pull,
don't push
She stares down
through him-
he twirls her hair,
her Heart
like they sleep,
like they dance
under the street lights,
slowly,
and then,
all at once

Everything grey

Her eyes the kept moon as a still pond holds the stars. The month had turned and the crisp air was on the verge of breaking through, another change. After the long greyed cumulus cloud passed over the constellation her eyes were locked on, she brought her almost black eyes back to the stone at her foot, and then kneeled so that her left leg was bent and her right leg was underneath her. She wore the old grey hoodie and kept her hands half way in the sleeves, clenching the edges tapering past the wrists in her palm but keeping her small thumbs free. With the small bite of the inside of the cheek, she brought her left thumb to trace the engraved letters whose feeling she now knew too well. The month would be here as soon as this one passed, and then the day, and then it would be two years that she traced the seventeen letters, eight numbers, and one dash. She hadn't planned on coming, not even on being home. Thinking, she could smell the tulips that she always brought, thinking of how weary she had become in trying to bring herself to forget. Usually she cried for minutes that seemed like hours while she was there, but this night only one tear fell and she was even unsure if it fell for the same reasons they normally did. The warm wind caressed the spot behind her ear she loved, and it was there, in that moment, she surrendered to a small laugh. On her feet now, a melancholic wave made its way through her as she looked down with hands in the large pocket of that worn jacket. She didn't know how, but she knew in the way that one knows summer is over and the bite of winter is on its way. She stared, firm and saddened and certain that this would be the last time. 

Double sided

She left with goosebumps and tears perched at the corners of her eyes, and yet with the smallest of victorious smiles. She watched him dance upwards as she ran her thumb and pinky up his spine as one. His thin lips moved left with his smirk and bold eyes as he looked through her. The whispers of the comforter warmed them as his voice warmed her. He asked her the same silly question from the night before that she still had no answer to. He sang songs she only knew the beats to as they moved in those rhythms together. He grabbed her hand and she shivered with how it sprang through her veins. Pain, she realized there, was something she had not known as well as she thought.