growing attached to / all of the soft / that hangs

off your shoulders / a freshly washed sweater

we are coming undone / and it is

for good reason / sometimes / i wash my coffee

down with what we used to be / even before

the tender of you / forgot what it is to be tender

tumble dry / low heat

the shoulders hang wrong / tug off skin / soft but

not in the way warmth should be

there is a small stain in the

left-hand corner / red wine / or blood / something

unchangeable in the fibers / it is having a hard time

letting go / and i think / it looks a lot like us

love letter

this is a letter i will never send.

or a letter i will put in your mailbox

every morning until you read it.

(i haven’t decided.)

a thank-you card that does not express gratitude.

a love note without any feeling in the pages.

maybe it should be an apology.

as long and sprawled out as a novel.

written only in ornate declarations.

but it isn’t.

no, this is a letter just to say,

like something stuffed into a jar,

there was never enough air for me here.

learn

the garden is all stars tonight

and each one is named

after a woman who walked away.

i hope i learn from them.

moment

it is not enough

if when love comes

i am able to keep it

only for a moment.

my heart is too loud,

too demanding,

for love

to greet me at the door

and then disappear

as if it were never

really there.

only a guest

that did not make

reservations, after all.

unsteady

out of these hollow parts,

that voice dredges up the birth

of something like a dozen monsters.

the sound is unsteady.

or i am unsteady in its presence.

like i am the edge of a moving ship

or an amusement park ride

that should have stopped but hasn’t.

and when it ceases,

i have to admit that it is partially my

tight grip on the railing

that leaves the bruises on my palms.

i spend most nights arms open.

i spend most nights fingers curled,

but empty as the whirling wind of a drum.

empty as the glass with the bottom cracked.

empty as the vowels

in the back of your throat.

churning, churning.

in the end, i would not know

what to do with full hands.

one after the other

here, this is for you:

the story of rage stolen from

the center of a storm.

gifted to a human.

have you heard this one?

heard of the hands wringing

themselves dry in stairwells,

snapping joints one after the other.

heard of the pacing. the hunting. the desperation.

the anger that left everything red or red turned ash.

heard of the candle burned down to the wick.

(what we do for such

little measures of peace.)

heard of the greed. the rampant jealousy.

the fruit we ate and hoarded.

even now.