12 Things I Wish I Could Say to You, to Anyone

There’s a struggle to admit that I miss you.
I waver between deciding whether you were an idea and continuing to recall you as a human being.
What were you thinking, three weeks after, when you sent that message?
“Hey. Never mind.” Too much to deconstruct.

When we’re both on Skype and visible, I feel like we’re simultaneously confessing.
Will you ever be like the others, become a fond memory? or is this my punishment?
It’s difficult to say your name aloud.
I cringe every time Counting Crows comes on the radio.

My excuses on the phone were pathetic.
He was sitting next to me when I told you I was taking the easy way out.
If I were as good as I profess I would be brave enough to suck it up and let you know.
I’m not.

“To the Man Kira Has Slept With After a Bad Breakup, Who Has Long Loved Her but Never Said a Word”

AN ADDRESS TO MR HALLOWAY-

Slumber on the sweat-soaked duvet,
Mr. Halloway; rest your timid cheek
against her pillowless pallet,
both ears ready to catch her
fetched fevered panting,
roar of blood beneath beige skin
bursting out into your reason for breath.

There’s a sweet scarring story of how
you two came to merge, purge, converge yourselves;
don’t let its telling pass into flat controlled quiet
as you pass sticky fingers along the cast-shadow curves
of two prickly armpits.

Count fifty fair freckles ‘cross the spread
of her chest, from hollow of neck to the
tip of each breast dipped in dusty pink posies –
your famous attention to detail comes calling,
so you flirt with her pores, wish for more
than twelve seconds you could push past
precise pokes and proddings, uncover
scars you don’t doubt are there.

A POSTSCRIPT FOR KIRA-

He’ll quiver, comfort,
twitch of tainted tendons
in an overripe neck too ticklish to touch;
you know his heart’s too healthy to break
but his swagger is nothing but effort;
his face when you’re through will be
the house of cards you built just so you
could have the satisfaction of watching it fall.

You lay back and listen
to light-fingered lingerings;
he is soft where you are hard
fuzzy where you are sharp.
Slide your green nail
‘long his chin and contemplate his purpose -
this, your revenge,
is it rightly directed?

Blooming night freezes - you’ll have to decide
whether festering foul of your missing
is excuse for intent to chew up another
and cough them out on a black, thankless
doorstep with the stink of your sex
still stuck in his sockets.

I am nestled here, settled in a space
I never expected to understand or
inhabit;
entranced, embraced, encompassed –
at the top of a mountain I never deserved to conquer
in the center of a labyrinth I never even solved
waiting for the sand to trickle away
for my time to end, reality to descend
this is a dream that feels real.

Beyond a tiled floor there are Italian hills
crowned with tangled cities
that curl into themselves like a scared child
composed of a thousand roads
that meet at least twice,
like two people - lovers for a time -
who run into each other at a supermarket
three states away
five years later.

Beyond Italian hills there is Florence
a city where eternity has dwelt
and I spent my only 96 hours
trying to ignore the red spots on my skin,
the black cloud behind my eyes;
Florence -
a twist of streets circling countless squares
a mega-what of people who worship a dome
and live off leather, tourists, fake Prada purses
hawked by desperate men
long departed from their African villages.

Italy -
I wish I could push you down past the cork of a wine bottle
take you home with me,
a perfume to dab on my wrists
behind my ears for Fancy Fridays
with my boyfriend
a candle to burn for tropical storms
when the lights are out
my mother is napping on the porch
a pool to dive in at the end of July
when I start to think of my senior year
and I realize that Europe,
sweet Italia,
you are still a labyrinth
but that I am no longer caught in your middle.

Look at where I am. It’s sickeningly poetic. I hate writing straight autobiographical poetry but I hadn’t written a poem in weeks and I needed a warm up, so I gave into the urge and waxed poetic about where I am.

This was difficult for me because I usually am more interested in and inspired by my relationships with people rather than places, but I gave it a go.

When I cut off all my hair
watched it drop to the floor in blue bundles
like egg shells discarded from a nest
broken and lost
crushed beneath the heels of so many feet
I was trying my best not to think of you.

Even now I am haunted by you:
there is nothing I do without passing through your shadow.
I give no smiles that I do not doubt,
no compliment that isn’t tainted by your bitterness.

The breeze sweeps my shoulders;
my responsibilities are fewer.
But the months since December
will not fade.

You will not see my new haircut.

I picked up the phone and told you:
Hello, I’m breaking your heart.
The words barbed wire against my tongue -
my vowels bled, my consonants hemorrhaged,
and I know your receiver gored
with my voice.

I told you:
I have convinced myself that whatever pain you felt was false.
I have convinced myself that I have done nothing wrong.
These are conversations I never expected;
all of this after your sister in the coma
all of this after your sister never waking up
all of this after your plane ticket is purchased
and my inbox is filled with subtext:
I love you.

I told you:
I was never strong.
Five months of saying I miss you and This is hard
made me weak.

You told me:
I don’t care anymore.
Do what you want.

There is a recurring dream you have
in which a boy with curling hair takes
the butter knife from the second drawer
and drives it slowly beneath
the thumbnail of your right hand.

He is wearing plaid and a grin
and his teeth are perfect
and you want to take that same knife,
drag it along his gums,
collect his molars in your palm -
a smile you can wear
on top of your own like a shark’s.

When you pull back the curtains
and there’s dreamlight on your pillow,
caught in creased fabric,
you unfold your fingers -
find fingernails fastened to
the pool of blood on the floor.

In their place bits of brick broke free,
your kneecaps knobbed in red, flaky rash,
and caught in the wire bowed round your dark head
a tiara of teeth -
a trickling temptation.

The boy in the plaid takes his place
at the finish line -
your dream comes full-circle,
so you watch him
with your stolen stained glass eyes.
He takes off running all rough in reverse, thighs clenching
like defrosted hams from the freezer;
misconceptions borne of your dreamland
demystify.

You tell me about the waking and weeping
because there is no one to pull you in close
once you lift up your fingers and see that your nails
are still firmly attached to the tips of your skin
and you realize and realize and realize again
that the boy in the plaid
with a grin like the sun off pretend horizons
is nothing but a tiny electric shock -
synapses sparkling as they fire sleepily.

Truth is being awake, putting on favorite records,
calling me over for mimosas and to watch
pigeons roosting at your windowsill coo
and build nests that will only last until wailing winds
blow them away once again -
but we know by the time we have finished with breakfast
they’ll be stacking up
bowls of branches in the same
unwise locations as before.

But you tell me of church-glass
that you’ve glued into goggles
for gazing at sons that kick soccer balls
across saffron skies.
It’s always the same:
different people, places,
and new kinds of terrors
to haunt you awake.

The first bit of cool breeze I found today
sprung up between the withered marble of two headstones.
Ivy all around and my shins ached.
Anna Maria Rose, 67 or 62 -
Sarah Mary, 27 -
took pity.

The trees are overgrown, sprawled.
It should be disastrous or dark;
instead there’s green peace
to palms and perennial paths.
This brick has been here since before
any of us breathed.

There’s power in the spots on Sarah’s grave -
in the ant crawling ‘cross my page -
in the importance people place on taking marble slabs,
carving dead names deep.
It’s transient, you want to say.
Marble dissolves quick as bones.

I want to be locked in, shut in, kept captive with the dead.
I want to experience one night’s worth
of the way the roots keep this dirt,
incorporate long-wasted forms,
pull them deep into an earth
that offers little but memories that
no longer make sound for anyone but the bricks
that rise on either side
and muffle the grass that would flourish from their flesh.

There’s honeysuckle here.
These are flowers I haven’t seen
since I was seven years old.
I’m alone in a cemetary and
I want to cry for the half-buried headstone
beneath these briars.
I want to lean in above
and between my lips take
the stamen of this flower
so I can taste graveyard honey.

When I get home,
and I empty my bag,
I’ll pull free my blanket and to the floor will fall
a thousand tiny flecks of cemetary dirt
that I will never be able to wash free from the rug.