(I finger the cardboard but do not pick up my brushes)

I have shopped at the forbidden planet and I have located la reux san michel and I have taught myself these words, if spelled incorrectly, by listening to a man speak softly into my ears so no one else could hear.


At times I am afraid of his body for reasons that seem obstructed by clouds. I blame the news, partly, and a certain book of short stories.

At the time I did not say no. Nor did Pam, topless, but that doesn't make it consensual. Nor did he do anything wrong according to law. And still he did something wrong. These things are more complicated than we like to acknowledge. It is so much more comforting: "no" versus "yes". We forget that we speak with more than our mouths and feel with more than our bodies. Though they may quiver, though we may be both pleasured and afraid.

I pull apart the ether and grasp at fistfuls of air. All I have to bet with: a bottle of cider and acrylic paints in eight colors. I finger the cardboard but do not pick up my brushes.

(I will sew you into my thighs and crochet my eyes across your biceps)

Here is a feeling that I struggle with: the need to have my suffering acknowledged. It is what makes me consider what it would be like if you killed yourself in the shower, and I had to tell people.

I do not want to be appropriated. My day did not go as planned. I poured myself into him. I dripped liquid.

The scarf is almost finished I will sew you into my thighs and crochet my eyes across your biceps. I hold my fingers in the flames until my flesh drips onto your flesh.

I smash my face into your face. My forehead molds to your cheek. Colors explode out of the canvas, textures and slipstreams bursting bright light.




Dear,

In another life I will marry you. I will hold your shaking hands until we sleep.

(I cling to the seat and scream lava)

Swinging, my childhood friend and I jump-- and land in Mars. My younger brother was allowed to come, but only sometimes.

I have rearranged the plants. The lamp survived the guests. The chemical-free deodorant was inordinately expensive, though the organic walnuts cost less than in comparable stores.

Tomorrow I will buy new pants. I will care about where they were made and how but in the end I will probably buy the pair that's cheapest. That morality should be anything but easy. The old wizard nods, winks, evaporates into the night.

Porcupine quills protrude from the vase shaped by his clay-slicked hands. He prepares at night, for the morning.

If I forget what I have written it's because he has sliced through his fingernail with the bread knife. The tires list threateningly toward the couch; I cling to the seat and scream lava.

She walked down the street, carefully, and into the alley. Every morning at least three rats and one man leering at her, keys slipped between her fingers like brass knuckles at her side. 

Once a man followed her through an empty park at night. He advanced and she said, NO over her shoulder, meaning it, NO. She walked faster but not so fast as for him to think she was scared and she flexed her fists but not so much that he would anticipate the threat and she tried to emanate this energy from her body if you touch me I will destroy you.

Eventually he gave up and she walked back home and after taking off her coat and pouring boiling water into a mug she stood by the kitchen counter staring lifting the tea bag in and out of the water.

(I will weave my hurt into these yarns and my gratitude and joy)

Certainly I have reason to be perturbed. I am suckling a barren popsicle stick and he is making bear noises in the kitchen. He lifts his knees and holds his fingers up like claws.

Certainly there are infinite ways of becoming new. There is a bookstore with dramatic literary titles mashed with architectural concepts I will go. I will read until I am stuffed to overflowing with other people's lives. I will celebrate theirs as my own and feel the needles slithering through flesh. Ours is a bond made by the veins of our hands.

I have flipped the popsicle stick from my tongue to the futon beneath me. The likelihood is high that a gnat has just flown into my mouth. I am remaining calm.

I delight in the give of the keys beneath me, concavities cleaving to fingertips. I really should be brushing my teeth.

It is time,
she said,
to do nothing.

I breathe. God is golden clouds and I am easing back into them, hugged by wool and the faint smell of sheep. I hear bleating, see the wide green and the crags and the hooves, meandering toward grazing and streams.

I am called back by the plant and the book on the wooden apple crate propped beside the doorway. Though there is no door, though perhaps it is more realistically, resplendently, a way.

I have gotten off track. Skeins unwind as my fingertips grow red, needles arcing over and over again into flesh. I will weave my hurt into these yarns and my gratitude and joy. You will wear it round your neck for seasons. It is a token of the words I cannot say because they are not words anyone has yet said and still I believe it exists, somewhere: the way of saying it.

You're a genius all the time. Be sure of it. Find your family and hold their hands as the lightning strikes. Drenched in rainwater and fingernails charred, your shoulders brush, warming the place where you stand.

The movie made him cry and then I cried not because of the movie but because of the part in the movie which made him cry, which would have made me cry had I not been crying because he was crying at the part of the movie that would, otherwise, have made me cry.

(It is a story I tell myself that I need constant love)

It is a story I tell myself that I need constant love.

We are blackened air-domes bubbling underwater. We pop to the surface gasping. You drag me down hard by the ankle. I kick at your face and collapse onto your chest, coming.

We drape in flannel sheets, bare legs stretching from beneath the covers. I roll to my side. You stand up and wipe yourself with an old shirt.

I close my eyes and trace fingers across her lower spine. She is damp with sweat. I feather my chin along her stomach. My eyes lift to her cheekbones, dark hair curled against her temples.

He throws me to my back and I spread my knees and the wind blows out the candle.


He cannot stop cleaning. My intestines are impregnable. Try. Make me.



I don't want to write I don't want to write I don't want to write I have finally clipped my nails. I'd been meaning to since Christmas.

He keeps his wallet in a plastic bag because the zipper has broken. My words are your interpretation. My words are ivy clutching yellowed lattice. I once was a romantic.

Your eyes are becoming my eyes but only sometimes. At the same time I am growing more willing to let you see. I light a candle by flipping a switch; battery-powered flames.

By its flickering light I am knitting a scarf. She is made of a sweater, all stitched together with different colored threads. My words are the needle and the erasement.