Memory

He sat crouched in the room by himself for a long time after she left. He could still taste her lips on his lips and feel the warmth of her body against his, but they were a reproach now. He stared at the three wilted blossoms on the desk where she'd sat. He still had a piece of her dress in his hand.
There was only regret left over. And disgust at himself. He didn't want to move for fear of opening more cracks and letting all that in, and worse. He wished he could bathe in the touch and smell of her rather than in his failure, but the failure overwhelmed him. He'd destroyed all hope of her. He'd hurt her and upset her. How could he have done that to her?
She remembered me.
That was his worst weakness, his most toxic drug. He was so eager for her to remember, he would tell himself anything. He would do anything, believe anything, imagine anything.
She did. She knew. 
In a daze he left the school long after everyone had gone. There were a few security guards left over, cleaning up the mess. Nobody bothered with him. His failures were private and invisible.
But not to her.
He'd pushed her. He's scared her. He'd besieged her. He'd vowed he wouldn't, and he did. He's kept himself together so scrupulously for so long, but when he came apart he did it with the force of centuries, he hated himself and every intention and desire he'd ever had. He hated everything he'd ever planned or wanted.
I love her. I need her. I have everything I had for her. I just wanted her to know me.
He walked until he was away from the sights and sounds. He found a clearing past the soccer field and lay down in the damp grass. He couldn't go any farther. There was no place to go, no one to see, nothing to want or hope for. He had built up his vision so patiently for so many years and wrecked it in a matter of moments.
She is my doing and my undoing.
She always had been. And what a price she had paid for it, too. He couldn't stay there. He still saw the red of the police lights beating against the heavy June sky. He got up, and his back was wet with the ground. He walked down the hill away from the school towards a two-lane road.
I've lost her again. Nobody remembers but me.
He walked along the river, and it felt good to be close to something older than he was. This river had a long memory but, unlike him, wisely kept it to itself. He thought of the Appomattox campaign, the Battle of High Bridge. How much blood had soaked into this river? And yet the river flowed. It cleansed itself and forgot. How could you cleanse yourself if you couldn't forget?
What would it be like if you didn't come back?
He sat at the edge of the river, minding the cold, muddy soak of inclinations. No matter how long you lived. Like the death bound convict glancing at the clock. You could never quite fit the small rotations to the big ones, could you?
He pulled mud covered rocks from the riverbank, small enough to fit in his pockets. Bigger ones he threw blindly into the riverbed, listening for the hollow crack of stone hitting stone of the merciful slap of soft water. He pushed rocks and mud into the pockets of his good pants, just daring his dumb autonomic brain to resist him. He stuffed a jagged few rocks into his breast pocket, a little abashed at his own stagecraft in a moment like this. There was no moment so momentous that it strangled all the little notions.
Except when you kissed her.
Decision like this were more dignified in the future or the past, or when they occurred in the lives of other people. The petty workings of your birdlike mind brought you down, and forgetting was your only salvation. It was his curse to remember lifetimes of those moments.
Appropriately burdened, he trudged to the road and followed it onto the bridge. The dark air moved cooler and faster over the water. Headlights of a car appeared and grew on the other side of the river but passed without crossing. He got to the highest point, climbed into the guardrail and sat on it, facing the river, dangling his legs over the water, feeling strangely young. He observed the rocks cutting into his skin as though they hurt someone else.
He climbed up to standing, balancing the guardrail under his stiff-soled shoes. He waves his arms to keep from slipping. Why did it seem important to jump and not to fall, when it came to the same thing? The heavy moisture in the air made his face feel wet. Another car passed.
Of all the millions of possible things he could take with him, he had a piece of her soft purple dress balled up in his hand and the sour taste of bourbon in the back of his throat. In his mind he held the look of fear on her face as she tried to get away from him and he wouldn't let go, ruining centuries of carefully nurtured hope, knowing he was ruining it, and still not being able to stop himself from ruining it.
That was enough to make him hold his balance and jump.

Souldiers

I understand soldiers now, I think. Ready to give their all for one sole purpose of the freedom of others. Going into full forced missions with willing hearts and knowing that one could not come back alive, I think that’s all part of this. Maybe I always knew I’d come back home in the casket you chose for yourself. I’m a soldier on my back with little air left in my lungs, dust is forming around me, and I’m watching the impeding darkness that I fought against fall as you are set free. I’m on my back and I know that this fight was right, I know that when I close my eyes and return to the dust that my duty will have been done. Loving you was like war and you were the yellow ribbons tied around the oak trees that begged me to go back to where I came from. I don’t know when this desert sand will settle or when I will have something to give again, but when I do- I’ll most likely want to use it on you.

Trance

Had you ripped 

my heart completely out 


I guess it wouldn't 

have 
been so bad


But you made sure 


to leave it half way in 


so I could feel it all

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.