Inhale the yawning frost
let it gather and collect
beside your sleepy heart
drowsy from neglect.
Rest your ghostly frame,
hush her muddled drawl.
You say you're feeling numb
but I know you feel it all.

Your soul is like a vagrant,
slinking through the alleys
of exposed cat ribcages
and rotting mangoes
and maggots lacking wings.
You watch a rabid mutt
peel flesh from the bone
of something long decomposed.
You're gathering
a stack of phonebooks
a spool of cobwebs
for a nest to keep you warm,
momma bird.
But don't you know,
that I could be your home?

I'm back.

For a long time I felt like I was unable post here because the man I was dating was obsessively checking to see if I had leaked any of my thoughts into this blog. This place has always been a refuge- a place to write and release and heal and ramble. But I couldn't ramble about my love-life insecurities and my anxiousness to leave and my suffocating, sorrow-ridden self in a public place. It would have given me away long before it was actually over. After that, I was nervous to write here. I would sit down with a hot cup of tea between my knees and stare at the little blinking cursor begging me to spill, and my hands would tremble and my pulse would quicken and I would always, always end up dumping out my cold cup of untouched tea and pick up a book to mindlessly lose myself in. I couldn't write because I refused to wallow.  Life, since then, is blissful. It's healthy, you know? I live the healthiest, happiest life. I wake grudgingly, but happily, at an ungodly hour when the sky is still dark and the streets are empty save for vagrants and troubadours.  I brew coffee and read the paper in the quiet, sleepy hours of my workplace and set out hot steaming cups of caffeine to the addicts and early-wakers of my city. I walk to school, my bookbag slung across my chest and my water bottle swaying slightly with my footsteps. I learn, I buy a cup of tea, I learn again, I buy another cup of tea. I come home to naked bricks and unreachable ceilings and best of all, a tall and open-armed man that laughs when I lick his face like a kitten and kisses me with a fervor equitable to Howard Roark's architectural desire. Life is good, and I'm back. 

(Official) Change of Address.

Safeguard all that is important to you. Take your yellow curtains with the lace silhouettes down. Neatly fold your clam-colored sheets and the quilt your mother gave you for your birthday and place them in a cardboard box. Press your fingers to the spine of each beloved book and carry them to the elevator. Place them in your backseat. Glance at the mailbox with the tiny numbers and your name written on a wrinkled piece of yellow paper. Disassemble the cradle of sleeping bones. Pack it up, pack it up, pack it up. Withdraw your possessions into protection. Not a trace of you remains here. Do not be afraid when you close the door to a hollow room. Slink to your knees inside your loft that smells like fabric softener, your loft of scattered underwear and exposed bricks. Count the neatly stacked boxes of buttons and threads and bubble-wrapped ceramics. Feel your lover's hand slide into yours and squeeze. Become cognizant of that feeling- that sedated, placid, extremely blissful feeling associated with home. Feel a smile spread across your face and the laugh lines in the corners of your eyes crinkle because your eyes are smiling too. These boxes mean something to you, but not what they used to. 

Stairs rattle
on the way up
to fill a coffee cup, ink
and batteries for the oracle.
Every tier is parallel
to four skeleton legs
where they tread,
silver with disease,
slowly eroding,
as the top of the staircase remains untouched
however desperate the stride.
This sun god mythology
serves only to undercut
a wilting Inca sky
under which rising flares
one cream one gold
peel the cracking heels
from steps caked
with buttercups. 

Desert Sleep.

I dream I am
a pale saguaro.
Shedding needles
pierce a yellow rind
shriveling
at my ankles.
Her seeds,
stale and gaping
in a nest
of terra cotta.
I recall
waking up
in a desert bog
with sand beneath
my fingernails.
The morning
reeked of sleep
and lemonade. 

Found an early, bitter snow
on your barren outer piece
so I peeled away the flakes
like dead cells from the fleece.
My teeth became the seeds
and my gums became a shell
while I warmed an early frost
and your swollen brothers fell.

Quiet in your movements
as your teeth split
like sea clams.
Opening and closing.
Your dove-gray jaw
heaves in high staccato,
charting gentle flagships
and postmarking
a sea of white-washed
heel and shin conversations.
Tiny splinters of light
beneath the tide pools
reveal delicate shells,
making real
the faraway sounds
of a name.

 Photo Credit: Maragret Durow

Happiness.

It's been a long time coming.

This pastel morning
has two monogrammed organs
to ease the aching