petals and bees

this is for you, knowing what you don’t know, this is for you sweet maybe child, this is for you in the next edition, this is for you after twelve hours, this is for you after ten thousand hours, this is for you, who I will hold at nights after a shower and in towel dry delirium, this is for you, dirty two day tupperware in the car, this is for you under florescence, this is for you varicose veins, this is for you who finds my arms safe, this is for you, holding hands as they leave this world, this is for you working harder, this is for you who knows how I like things, this is for you who pays closer attention, this is for you who stands over a sink and is willing to give everything away, this is for you thinking about her womb in the morning over easy and raspberry jam, this is for the family who finds me from somewhere, this is for you who is startled by time, this is for you who chooses not to leave me, this is for your fingers I love to kiss, this is for you who matches the lids with their containers, this is for you, leftovers, this is for you days off together, this is for you who I can see when I close my eyes, this is for you lessons to learn, this is for you healthy days, this is for you in sickness, this is for you holding so much more.

We both knew solitude as something else so I kissed her for us to know it together because the night helped me find her car helped me find her waist helped me find her mouth. We spent an evening lips flapping, eyes darting, little electrons in their shells as I circled a center where the weight is, catching it briefly in a disagreement between her lips and her eyes in the heaviest millisecond after the laughter we mostly didn’t mean. We titrated disclosure in the smallest concentration asking will she let me in? will I let her in? We talked art but did molecular chemistry. We talked love but were astrophysicists, orbiting the mystery. We never talked loneliness because we were that system under study we were the celestial body we tried to taste off each other’s tongues we were the intermolecular forces and the flask on the lab bench, quiet and observably still, nothing created nothing destroyed, just lipstick exchanged for lemon cake and karaoke. 

I wrapped around you like a lifering,
kept you from sinking to the bottom of the sea.
Don’t tell me I’ve forgotten how to tread my feet,
I drank the ocean just to set you free -

I saw you little, I knew you old,
I saw you buckle, I watched you fold. 
It is either you or me and off I go,
you still look good from so far below –

don’t forget the arms that knew you,
fast asleep, these last two years.
I sang you prayers and held you close, 
I begged to stay till my throat went hoarse –

can you take the heavy lifting from here?
The moon is out, I ask, but I know –
we’ll write our songs just to wipe them clear,
neck on fire, soft ear, so low –

I see you little, I know you old,
the sea is salty and your mouth is cold.
I’ll take the east, you take the west,
look for me rising when you find the shore - 

u left my system kicking & screaming im not exaggerating i woke up at 3 with my heel through the wall because i found u lying naked at the headrest of my skull eyes shut minding my own business never before could i see clear through the words i tried as if nothing lie between u and the rest stop where u sped off more like a good clean windshield id prefer to take a crowbar to instead i’ll lick the metal curve of my upper lip like a savage and whisper do better than that to the hot sweaty well-fed gods who do my bidding thumbs out in both directions for the miles back home doesn’t matter which way it’ll get me there

I have a bed where I stay, whenever I can.

The clock has a number.

Your small hand would have been in mine,

longer fingers than the week before,

a new dexterity,

a new word,

a new way of playing an old game,

a new way to reach the counter,

a new way of knowing what day it is.

The tumbling & unstoppable 

perfection of your little being. 

The clock has a new number. 

For now, I have this day of air to pin

at the wheel of my heavy, heavy heart, 

the day becomes clay becomes slip, the air I breathe in, 

I breathe out, still nothing to show,

for all these hours won’t make you 

keep your shape, sweet angel,

this, is how it goes, for now. 

the moon resembles a giant alloy coin its white metal reflection on the water blistering my face, shark circling, a centrifuge of moonbeam and a dorsal fin in rapture a pantomime of my hands in prayer position, oh angels I have forgotten how it feels to put my palms together in supplication, lost at the pew, this compressed patella which clicks now upon genuflection I really just need one hail mary just one bone thrown just one minute passed through a meat grinder with an aperture the diameter of my new gray hair

take a good long look for your god who put my blood in the water who could never lay eyes on an arm inside the throat of a shark so they dispatch you instead who is too busy for another grown woman with her elbow locked in hyperextension on a holy mandible, like how the plaster of paris sacred heart stiffened on our mantelshelf, just another lady with her hand and fingers disappearing down the giant dark mucosal hallway hallways are always a child’s nightmare full of inevitability of omens of a hero’s journey into the kitchen for a bowl of cereal after a bad dream oh mom I’m scared I can’t see past something so hungry for me

so my little night-sweaty fingers grip a spoon a thousand years ago it might as well have been the moon to me with sweetened milk the color of a monster’s tooth how could a mind so little be so biblically afraid and yet this shark has a particularly pronounced smile I observe before the jaw shuts itself through me and two by two I am split apart and the part of me that can write this is doing so by an iridescent submarine light caught by the slanted breath of its gray gills with all the time to kill in the hunger of a beast I wonder if I will remember come morning

Bro, feel me demand your gaze,

feel me drive my flag into the ground

and take a part of the room from you

until you shift your own physical body away,

bro, feel how it feels and stay there

for a small

smattering

of centuries.

When I see the sky, I say thank you to its blue face.

When I touch the ground, I say thank you for getting me around.

When I’m all alone, I thank the lamp for its friendship.

When I drink wine, I say thank you for reminding me.

When I smile, I say thank you for not forgetting about me.

When I can’t let go, I say thank you for staying so long.

When I lose count, I thank my other lobe for dreaming me back.

When I hear birds in the leaves, I say thank you for letting me in.

When I catch my own brown eyes, I thank father allele and mother allele.

When I climb back out, I’ll thank the new calendar year.

When I feel my heart, I say thank you for showing me heaven.

When I leave my body, I’ll say thank you for keeping me safe.

When I kiss, I’ll say thank you for seeing me.

When I try, every time I say thank you for one more.

When you find me, I’ll say thank you for waiting so long. 

It was still, as only a third floor, in late day, of the first heat wave, could be – only us, as horizontally soundless as astronauts, dreaming, mid-flight, of their earthly beds. You, conning sleep, me, unblinking, at a window of snowy blackout curtains, smuggling sun through its cleavage, awash in cool tones. Three tics for every fifth revolution is the only conversation, between a ceiling fan and me and you. Our bodies, an arrangement of waiting. For it to bifurcate the thickness around us. Into something resembling cold cream. Something else more closely related. To outer space or deep sea or hypopnea or onomatopoeia.

from Greek arruthmia ‘lack of rhythm’

You found it,   that small valve between the atrium and     ventricle from when my left brain blew         out my right heart like the recoil from a shot                 gun like           a drunk            at 2am             missing the curb like a leashed           dog      chasing a bone. You see I’ve   been putting myself back together these past few years  with the help   of your finger on         my pulse    the memory of where my pieces             belong. I lost my tongue         when I was 9               my hands at 13           my       feet      for running at 20        gone    I lost my ears   for listening at 26 over time I lost            my breast for holding anything         but a heavy     misfiring          heart. My eyes            you found       in a box      under the bed             thank god        they are           still wet.

image by Japhy Riddle; a guitar string plucked a number of times in a flatbed scanner during its scan.