some pages are ripped out

and lit

because they tell the truth.

this is learning which

kind of faith

you hold.

do you need to know?

do you need to hold facts

between your fingers

like playing cards?

or does the knowing

undo the believing?

gain or lose

there is sweat on the neck of his shirt.

the sun is not high today,

which means he is nervous. he should be.

he smells like the inside of a car

that does not belong to him.

the kind that keeps perfume

and chewing gum in the glove box.

he hands me sunflowers and soft handfuls of poetry

but there is still dirt under his nails.

as if he bent down in my front yard, my own little garden,

the one i tend and water.

stole only words he thought i would not miss,

but i spend my days observing the almost invisible details.

i miss nothing.

now the petals will curl with age.

the metaphors will peel back one by one

until they all sound more like apologies.

he looks at me as if i should be grateful.

i see only things that once

belonged to me presented as a gift.

and i think, does this mean

i have gained something or lost something?

i cannot be sure.

forging

we forge whole worlds in the pits of our stomachs.

nestle vines between our palms.

urge them to bloom but only if they do so discreetly.

we live stories. live wars. live wars that become stories.

become indispensable in our homes.

(yet always feel dispensable.)

and i want more for my daughter.

i want more for any woman who spent the day wondering

how to be better without taking up any more space.

wondering how to become permanent fixture.

wondering why no one listens to her flower tongue

unless the words sound sweet.

meaning, why no one takes her seriously.

wondering how to breathe softer.

make less noise. make more money.

make someone else happy. accept defeat when asked to.

do, bend, break. because she is woman.

we create from nothing. we are sisters, mothers, friends. all.

and yet, still. still.

we spend lifetimes trying to undo our own spines.

uncertainty

mumbling over

my own tongue,

so fat and full.

like grapes

never plucked

from the vine.

my tongue is

alcohol spilling;

time drunk and burdensome.

every word tastes like uncertainty.

like tar black midnight

in the quiet of the afternoon.

truthfully, i just want to say

i love you and

have that be enough.

insistent

i have known this heart

to be brutal in nature.

frenzied as a starved beast

at the first sight of love.

somehow i am always, at once,

standing on solid ground

and

teetering on the edge

of this insistent

heartache.

if i love you it is not because

you have always been

irreversibly mine,

it is because you

have always been

irreversibly drawn to

light

in a way i do not

understand.

sometimes