I once hung the woman I loved

more than anything

out to dry like a sheet on a clothesline.

I tried to wash myself off of her first

as if love wouldn’t stain.

It took her a long time to dry,

pinned stark white

and dripping with streaks of 

me and multiple promises

forming icicles

like memories do as they are slowly

forgotten, or frozen

into whatever it is 

we choose to make of them.

It took her a long time to dry,

but she is much cleaner now.

She finally laid back down,

she is not afraid to get the sheet dirty.

She has re-learned the art of 

picnic lunches in the park.

She remembers how to make love to a woman like

what Eve must have felt 

when she tasted that apple.

This gives me hope.

She was sixteen

going on seven 

the day she was stopped in her tracks 

by love.

It was not her own.

She saw only it’s flash-filtered

ghost lying on the table

in glossy 3 x 5.

We all want to know

where we came from.

Brighter than the white

of her dress

was the look between them,

and more steadfast, even, than

the triumphant eclipse of arms

forming one future.

You already know how this ends.

You’ve known since the first time you heard

promise put behind bars -

she was seven.

and going on eighteen the night she was

stopped in her tracks by

divorce.

“We’ll stay together for the kids.”

She was seven going on eighteen and

only half as old as she would be

the day it finally came

rolling into town like

blues music,

like a long time coming

from somewhere so deep inside

your lungs’ lungs

filled up with air

just hearing the word out loud

“divorce.”

A sixteen year old girl

sees an old photograph of her parents

on the coffee table on her way out the door.

Seeing more in one snapshot look of love

than in all her years she wipes tears

from curious eyes

but never the image from her mind.

We all want to know where we came from.

Politely we waited,

the day they told us,

as we always had,

my sister and I.

We listened solemnly.

We saved our dancing

for ourselves.

Called it relief,

tucked it into bed with us,

and turned out the night.

Swallow my love,

ocean-mouthed.

Roll it around those sandpaper taste buds,

a salty spray marinade to soften my edges

with time and patience,

with roughness and wetness.

Time is a funny thing,

for it is always healing, yet always

breaking things down.

I want a love like beach glass.

I want to find you floating in a sea of perfection,

putting all the plastics to shame.

I want you to be the one I won’t recycle.

And if you ever have something to say,

promise me you won’t keep it bottled up inside,

but you’ll still send it to me on waves.

We all need to learn to let the ink run sometimes,

because dreams can shatter,

but somehow we keep on

breaking down into beauty

like light through a prism.

Did you know that an octopus has three hearts?

Would that I could send you one heart

and keep one for myself,

and still have a spare.

These things are fragile, you know.

So when I saw that beam of light coming

from beneath the waves

so foreign and mesmerizing,

forgive my logic for thinking, even for a second,

you’d found a way to send me your heart.

An underwater lighthouse of heartbeats

rushing in to relieve my own,

a saltwater salve,

your message looking for my bottle.

I thought in miracles that night,

throwing myself at them

like skipping rocks.

But I stayed with the sand,

which is not unlike prayer.

A million tiny miracles kneeling

at the foot of their maker.

My mind eases back to shore.

Turns out it wasn’t your heart after all;

it was cell phone suicide.

Have you ever felt hope creep out of your bones

like a seed chasing sunshine: 

growing in that question mark kind of way…

and then like a parade?

Like 76 god damn trombones

which you mute - not quickly enough -

fumbling for the remote

to your inner marching band until you remember

you lost it a few parades back

somewhere in all the shuffle.

It simmers.

The hope.

Someone put a technicolor knob on your life

and cranked it wizard of oz style.

You thought that was butterflies?

That’s the fucking lollipop guild.

And too much of a boiling thing

only leads to evaporation,

but don’t forget about cycles.

And karma.

Just drop ice cubes into my consciousness like

goodnight kisses.

Let me down easy,

the way a soft wind tucks a falling leaf into a flower bed.

Even the moon gets depressed in winter,

for she, too, is hopelessly in love with the sun.

She begins to arrive early and stays late. 

She doesn’t believe in mutual exclusivity,

so she writes symphonies in the only language she knows,

fit for her orchestra of light.

But the music is sad and you know without hearing

or even seeing it.

You feel it creep in the same way 

the hope crept out.

Because the moon sometimes visits in the daytime.

But the sun knows nothing of discretion

or darkness.

He will never return the favor in the night.

So when he says to her,

“You are beautiful,”

For the first time, she pities him.

A beach glass chandelier,

she turns a shade of perfection,

singing her love songs to the stars;

a packed house every night.

You didn’t forget about cycles, did you?

The way the seasons melt into one another

like spooning, like trying

to remember a dream?

From time to time I see your words

like flower petals so soft

brushing across my skin but

in the end,

you ripped apart a flower in order to get them

and so I start to wonder if one day 

I will trip over petals 

I don’t remember losing.

Sometimes when I look at you,

I can’t tell which skin-hugged ink-prints

were born out of needles and which ones 

she left you with.

I can still see her like an oil spill.

Suddenly needles seem softer than kisses.

Or fingertips.

Certainly softer than words, 

the loudest of which were never uttered -

or not enough -

or not anymore.

I do not have enough arms

to hold you in.

I do not have enough arms to hold you

in.  You are spilling.

Or wait wasn’t that her?

There’s just a lot of

leaking.

If only I could siphon your pain,

fill balloons with your emptiness so

you could fall again - 

in love with the wind.

Stab the rest just to hear the sound

of closure.

You keep getting your heart caught in doors.

I’m propping them open with

cowboy boots and

half-whispered melodies and

too many bottles of beer and

words words words because I simply

do not have enough arms.

Tattoo an etch-a-sketch onto your chest

so that each move you make 

will erase those you did not (mean to).

Then go out dancing.

I do have enough legs for that.

I knew you once before.

You wove me back in

threads and stitches like waves

forming split second paintings

only the clouds can see.

And our colors stay the same,

we only learn to make new patterns with them

and I’m sorry for the time I dropped that stitch.

You remind me of my favorite playground.

As it peers out through the cookie jar lid of each new day

your spirit turns to your old soul, saying

“Meet me at the monkey bars,”

and they swing in choreographed delight

from rib to rib of your frame like a game of

chutes and ladders.

And I know some days all you can see

are the ladders

and the slides have no emergency exits.

And I know you feared the ocean

before you knew the word for drowning.

But the unseen edges of the deepest everything

are covered in the flame-kissed heartbeats

of creation.

There are days when I think we are all just

really fucking far from home.

Strands of DNA tied to bedposts -

evolution like rope out the window.

Maybe we’ve all been atheists

since the day we started believing in oxygen:

the day our mutation became mutiny.

What I’m saying is, 

you are an act of rebellion.

So run up the slides.

Have picnics in the rain.

Listen loudly,

for I am sound

perched like a breeze dancing tiptoed on eardrums

in a seldom silent world.

To the poor cricket,

who spends his days making the most

noise he can, but touches only

himself.

Leg to leg,

leg to leg

to leg again until he doesn’t even notice

he is screaming;

sometimes I fear this life.

To be heard, finally, only to be quickly

escorted from the premises.

So though I am sound,

I will also learn to be touch.

I will reach out and touch you with sound,

and sometimes I will just

touch you.

But the sounds that come out of you then,

well, I will be those too.

So let’s write schoolgirl notes to each other,

fingertips on skin.

Turn kisses into words,

tongues into verbs.

I will write the most beautiful poetry

and never stop admiring my

body of work yet always,

always be revising it.

Revising me, see,

life’s edges are serrated - 

often cutting, sometimes slicing,

yet somehow still enticing.

A hammock you know will tip at some point

but you lie in it anyway.

We are always perching,

I am always searching

for butterfly wings that match mine.

But we are taught to keep them tucked away

under blankets of apology

and backpacks heavy with fear.

Touch my wings and I’ll die,

but if I hide them, then I surely cannot fly.

So listen loudly,

‘cause I am singing my wings

and I will soar,

but somedays I will need you

to be touch.

I will still need a place to land.