shin splints

lover, please don't cry
i didn't mean it
when i stopped loving.

it
was just a test, the same as
last january, last june
nineteen years are enough
to learn how to be abused.

keeping tabs

at one or two a.m. (we're never sure), little things
stupid, dumb and funny things
they pull at me, the muscles off my bone.
have you ever been a skeleton?
i have. i pulled my mouth back and stared
so hard i saw mandibles, crania, my zygomatic arch
and i knew i'd look good in a lab.
under your microscope, in your latex-hands
i knew i would never stop looking good.
but sometimes i think
that's not all that matters.

the player's residue.

seamstresses are in my ancestry. long needles and thin yarn
bind my future and my past. and at the seams?
at the seams, where it matters most?
i don't know.
i didn't go into the family business, i am closed out
and what does it matter to me what color thread,
what stitch ties me up,
so long as it does. what does it matter?
it doesn't. and i am left with many points of entry
and very few exit cues.

happiness

at the point where i don't feel my jaw moving
down the road when i can't see the cars coming
around the bend, there are swirly things
distant, cheerful, fiery girls
and wonderful boys with autumn eyes
there are recurring themes and neatly tied strings.
the popping in my head has stopped, but
when i move my neck creaks like a nineteenth-century
staircase, just barely redone.
i might be slippery, but i'm really quite warm.

asterisks all over

sensibilities, left on the mountaintop. i am
bereft of joys and colored books, pages torn
piled to form
soft mountains of childhood
sunflowers grown to fit our eyes. let's eat
their seeds, bake them in our gas-filled ovens
during the summer months. the vibrant greys
filling my mouth and nose, the bleeding
purples and their coiling smokes.

it is not clear to me; you are not toxic, you are not green.

illegitimate fears sweep me back up the chimney,
i do not fit.
i am meant for soulful arms, creased like yours
autumn eyes with sharp corners. i am
lost for words, left with fingertips. i am sinking,
you are smooth.

first christmas

my hands, cold from wondering, hold themselves
little knots of knuckles, worries, december chills
scarves and coats and winter smells
it's never easy, miles apart
it's always lonesome, it's always hard

reasons to have written

when i was not much younger and very far behind
i pretended to be a cat and there was
a ball of yarn, red and unraveling. it wasn't mine.
the echoes of toddlerhood, faint with neglect
clamped into my ears, i played. i pounced.
foreign dreams, foreign things. the staple
did not tear, it poked and sliced. i became small,
whittled with age and you know- there is nothing to do
but regret

and i have never smiled at the color of regret.