THE WHOLE STORY
I think I am building a chair
but I am digging a river.
I am hammering
the gap between days
with a tooth pick
hoping for oil.
There’s a week
where you are a nun
sitting beneath a pile of glass.
And another where light
is in the clouds
and can’t escape.
It’s April.
There are many weeks
untouched
by the humidity
of your breath on my cheek.
Outside, when the pond scapes
the land,
when land pools
at your feet, warm dirt.
I let go of wet sidewalks.
I let go of the dog
that attacked me
being a sign to call you.
I let go of a train ride
five years ago
thumbing a nickel in my pocket,
lonely as a hole.
My desire for you
is an empty box
cut flat at the edges.
I lie down in my thoughts.
Black beetles wriggling in my ear,
a year ago
I would’ve crushed them
with my left shoe
and tossed them out the door.
Out the door
there’s a Florida field
where I learned violence
sixteen Aprils ago.
The diseased turkey I chased
into a briar
at eleven years old
to impress an adult
who did not tell me
what would happen next.
Stones
were my thoughts.
For years, before
I met you
I told this story on dates—
stopping at the capture
of the bird
with my bare hands
not mentioning the snap
or the silence after
the turkey stopped spinning
in his fist.
Not mentioning
even to you, who knew me
better than anyone,
the tears I fought back
when handed 100 dollars
for my trouble,
becoming a man.
When it was done
and the light became untrapped
from the clouds, hitting
my child face
I saw a mattress floating
in the distance
on the river behind
the limp turkey.
It was not sinking.
I never got the chance to tell you:
I was thinking of ways
to make it sink.
The Inheritance
Hours we spent
planting orchids on the tree.
I cared nothing.
I cared for nothing
but you.
Now, in June
on a park bench in a different city,
I push a pin tack
deeper into my thumb
to remember.
Steady breath.
Everyday I move
between wanting
to apologize
and wanting to scream
for this:
I could not understand
how you felt
until you made me
feel the same way.
You handed me
a plastic skull
you had carried around
your entire life.
Then you made it real.
lassos for clouds
We didn’t drift apart.
House parties,
oranges and cherries
inert in their green
clay bowls. You,
already weeping.
Giving you me
which you could not hold.
Demolition is lovely.
It creates room
for your thoughts
to move into the emptiness.
The words
I offered you
like lassos for clouds.
Throwing the rope
over and over.
I could not pull them
closer, only apart.
Dispatch From the Future We Never Had
We were caught in a blue madness.
I wanted to be your shadow
and you wanted to be mine. Nowadays
you sit on the couch, holding
my feet in your hands and cry
only at another movie character death. I flick
the TV on and off the way we used to
gather ice in our mouths
to see who could become the numbest.
How cold was it before we came back
together? Remember when we ran
into each other at the art gallery
where a man danced in a long purple gown?
The first time after things ended. Looking
at each other from across the room
was like looking at clouds. We each felt
we could imagine any shape
for the other, knowing it didn’t matter—
if we got too close it would fall apart. We stayed
as long as we could, apart, remembering
the lemon-price of love: the soured out
faces the soul makes when biting down
again and again on the same problem. Our eyes
circling each other like dogs in the park.
When we finally spoke, we both admitted:
i miss you. And we stood in silence
wishing missing was enough.
couples therapy
I drive us out the front gate
of your neighborhood, past the stoplight
where, once, I missed
the light turning green
because I had leaned over
to kiss you on the cheek
and in that extra three seconds
a car barreled through the intersection
at speeds high enough to kill us,
and hold your hand
driving toward the generic office park
both of us taking turns
being silent for a year
the same streets and buildings turning
over in our heads as we move them
through us, radio on or off, doesn’t matter
now though mostly off
and in the parking lot we wait
in the Miami summer heat
I try to catch a lizard
scaling a thin dead tree
we take turns crying
for a year, on and off
occasionally holding
the other’s face we believe
if we keep a good grip
it will not disappear.
sacrament
Heartbreak is a little priest
hiding in a lake.
A trail of fingers
floating in the water
between islands.
A house where a kid watched
hydrangeas bloom in the backyard
then set them on fire.
I am not the memory
of a shotgun
but there is a door in my heart.
A crevice resembling
the black of your pupils
and a child sitting in that darkness
asking to be taken home.
And the hope that it’s not too late
to put him to sleep.
For you and I to tuck ourselves
back into each other,
the nurses’ corners of our skin
coming loose
when we last pulled away.
Years ago, in a northern city
the sidewalk became ice
beneath our feet as we stood
on a street corner arguing all night.
Only two weeks together
and already falling apart.
For so long, we lived like two fish
trying to remember water.
I wanted to confess
everything to you even after
I had no breath to do so.
clam theory
There’s a name for how we broke.
It starts with the sound of feet trudging
up a staircase at midnight. The gasp
after taking one step too many is proof
that an object is defined by what’s
invisible within it. A chair can only hold
the weight of a person heavy enough
not to float away, and water will stay
liquid, no matter how cold, without
a speck of dust for the ice to form around.
Destruction is just the start. When a forest
burns to ash, the smoke creates
thunderstorms that bring flooding
to the now empty space. I never said
it was happy. We cracked ourselves
open and expected the cracking
to matter. I expected you to pull me
out of myself like a clam lodged
in mud, drowning at the bottom of a lake
built from my own burning.
