And now you.
I know that I am lucky to be alive at the same time as you. I know that finding you was a cosmic needle in a haystack, a joke of Internet cables and telephone wires. But I also know that you are more afraid of opening up than losing me. And I know that you stop at car accidents just like my father.
Today I Accidentally Told Someone That I Love You
It slipped out a little too easily, dangled off my lips,
tumbled across the bed. It was a somersaulting,
taunting affair.
I know it’s not the kind of thing I should be
telling someone else. I should be whispering it into
the bends of your knees and spelling it out
with my mouth on your mouth;
but you are still too far away
and I am not braver than distance.
I am as reliable as public transportation.
I have hands made of guardrails and a train station heart;
it is full of strangers always trying to get somewhere else.
It’s not a final destination.
I don’t ever want to hold you back
from where you’re trying to get to.
I’m sorry I never tell you what I really mean.
Improper Emergency Procedure
You have more fucking fault lines than California,
but I’d still settle somewhere along your coast
if you’d take the time to stop shifting for a moment.
I’m not afraid of the ground moving under my feet,
but I’m a little worried about your tectonic plates
grinding up against mine in a way
that sends people running for door frames.
Fresh Mint
I have written twenty-seven poems
about how it feels to be sad and still love you
at the same time
and no, baby—no—I don’t mean
got up on the wrong side of the bed sad;
I mean can’t get out of the bed sad.
I mean waking up with a pit in my stomach
that didn’t come from a cherry.
It’s nothing like a peach.
If you plant it in the ground, nothing
will grow from it.
Nothing ever grows here.
I have lips laced with guilt when you kiss me.
I watch movies about kids with cancer
and I relate when they try to push people away
because they know they’re on the way down.
I always feel like I’m on the way down.
I taste like salt.
You taste like toothpaste.
There’s no poetry in that. It’s just life.
I Just Can’t Do This Right Now
Tonight I wish I had someone’s body
pressed up against mine. I am glad you are
not here to see this.
I need a man who does not look at me
the way you look at me. I need a man who is
willing to walk away from the mess in the morning.
Not like you with your telephone hands.
You are always feeling me out; you are always
calling me back. I am ringing around the wire for
you. Sometimes I forget how to want you and myself
at the same time.
I Don’t Know If I’m Cut Out for This
The way you say my name makes me want to cry into
dirty pillowcases. The way you say my name makes
me want to kiss you on the mouth.
The way you say my name makes me think of
jogging down the street with a ponytail bouncing
against the back of my neck: steady, rhythmic.
Heartbeat. Pulsing. Sweat.
The way you say my name makes me believe in
caffeinated beverages: pressing palms together at the
kitchen table. Forget the church. Take me to bed instead.
Neither of us is getting any sleep.
The way you say my name reminds me of stepping
off a plane. The way you say my name reminds me of
elbow- and kneepads. The way you say my name
makes me want to try harder.
Salt
I want you to know that it is okay not to love me.
I want you to know that you are not the first person
who found it a little too tough, who took two steps
back when my jaws started snapping.
I want you to know that I look like I taste of
cigarette smoke and scotch, but I just taste like salt.
I swear that you’re not missing anything but
band-aids and promises bent out of shape if you run
the wrong way when I hold out my hands.
Roll Over
Water Me Until I Drown
I’ve finally figured it out, okay? I know it took a long
time. I know it took too long.
But I don’t want to be the sad girl you fuck when
you’re trying to love yourself. I want to be
the house you bring potted plants into even though
you can never remember to take care of them.
I want to be the trees that remind you of home;
I want you to look at my legs and think of climbing
and broken bones and childhood games that always
left you stranded. I want you to know that I might
leave you stranded. I want you to know that you
are the only thing that slows my city down.
Promises That Don’t Sound Like Promises
Sometimes you talk like I am someone’s favorite coffee mug
(something familiar to keep coming back to)
and you are a single-use picnic plate,
(something flimsy and disposable).
This is me telling you that I think you are wrong.
I think we might just be pieces of the same china pattern:
breakable
breakable
but something you try to keep together.
And anyway, there’s nothing wrong
with paper plate dinner dates.
I could lounge on a living room floor
and eat straight off of you
without a single damn complaint.
That’s It. That’s All.
I don’t know how to say it,
so I’m writing it down.
I want to kiss your bad days
on the forehead.
I want to stroke your hair
in the morning.
I want to know
what your mouth tastes like
when you get off the phone
with your mother.
Like Small Children, Like Stray Dogs
I said it before (though perhaps with less grace)
and I’ll say it again:
I want to take the messy parts of you in
like small children, like stray dogs.
Kiss them on the mouth, give them a place to stay.
I can’t believe there are bits of you, at your age,
that are still too young to know
that they are worth taking care of.
If you don’t want to look in the mirror, that’s fine.
We will cover every piece of glass in the house.
We will drape sheets across the bathroom walls
and drink only out of coffee mugs;
but I am still going to marvel
at the blessing of your face
at my kitchen table.
Bunk Beds
I want to make love to you
in my childhood home,
bring your hips to my hips
in every place I ever felt small,
find better reasons
for staying up nights.
Laugh Lines
I am always moving toward you.
On my bad days, I say to myself: “then you.”
Sure, this now. But t
hen you.
I will keep tossing myself life lines.
I will keep writing myself afloat
until I don’t have to write a poem
for every mile marker
from here to California.
You and I together is the most foolish thing
I’ve ever hoped for. You and I apart is more foolish.
When I can’t sleep at night, I dream up
conversations with you. I never call. I never push.
I try not to whine. I just write it all down.
Sometimes I want to apologize
for wanting you out loud,
like too many people know the reasons
I am going to have laugh lines.
Sometimes instead of distanced pillow talk,
I want to curl up with the phone
and read you poetry.
Instead, we just talk about it.
You say, “Honey, how was your day?”
And I say, “Today I wrote another poem
about your coffee cup mouth
and all the ways you still keep me up at night.”
I hear a sigh in your smile.
You make a sound that reminds me of
fighting with my bags at the airport;
but you’re still too far away.
You Are My Moving Forward
How many people have told you that you feel like
coming home? I’m sure you’ve been somebody’s shelter,
somebody’s summertime, somebody’s everything before
you were anything to me.
You don’t remind me of home. You don’t remind me
of honeysuckles or fried green tomatoes or twisted ankles.
You don’t remind me of running back toward anything.
You are not safe walls to hide behind.
You are everything on the other side.
Between Your Anxieties and My Pen
I don’t know how we get anything done.
You drum your fingers on my throat and think of rain on the roof of the house you grew in (not up, but sideways): the place where your last love left you alone; the place where you learned how to cope with silence and water your own plants.
And then you tell me about it—
and honey, I love to hear you talk, but I want to get in an argument with your mouth that neither of us can win, tongues twisted up like roots. I want to kiss you and feel like I am growing (and then I want to write about it).
I want to get my hair caught in the thick of you. I want you to understand that I will not always be sprouting next to you, so maybe we should take advantage of this little plot of land while we have it.
So you kiss me.
You kiss me and tell me that I taste like sand. You tell me that you have dreams of the ocean dragging me away. You tell me that you wake up afraid of riptides and ocean currents; and then you kiss me again.
And I keep thinking about waves breaking on a shore somewhere until I break away to catch some breath so I can say, “Lover, that was a pretty good line; do you mind?”
And, baby, maybe it’s my fault. Maybe when I put down this pen, I’ll stop looking for ways to write you in and you’ll stop worrying that every word you say is filed away somewhere in writing.
Until then, maybe we’ll just have to try harder to stay in the moment. Kiss me until we stop thinking about growing and ocean currents.
Kiss me until nobody cares about the metaphors anymore.
Teach Yourself to Recognize Risk but Still Take It
The first time you hear something like love
in the soft tone of his voice, do not act like he has
given you the moon.
Act like he has given you smooth blown glass,
fine china teacups: something beautiful
but absolutely breakable. Something with the potential
to be so, so sharp.
But swallow the lump in your throat.
Do not bother padding the floor. Waste no time
with an overly heavy grip. We lose so much
for fear of letting go.
You have to let it breathe. Put it to use.
It’s no good tucked safely away. Roll over in the bed
and bare your neck to teeth. Just buy some thick soles
for when the glass breaks.
Please Don’t Bring This Up on the Phone
I keep rewriting this poem.
I want it to make more sense.
I want it to be less honest.
I keep counting off things to blame it on.
Something about a rocky mountain high.
Something about the altitude messing with my head.
Something about missing the sound of your voice
more than anything.
I miss the sound of your voice more than anything.
Six days ago, on the bottom bunk of someone else’s bed,
I wrote you some words in a marbled composition book:
“I can’t go another day choking back
I love you.
I feel it in my shoulders when I breathe.”
Oranges
I wake up in the middle of the night
and I text you things like “why aren’t you in my bed?
come eat a bowl of oranges off of me.”
I don’t know what this means.
I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.
Something about you and me in bed
with sticky fingers
and wet mouths
is appealing to me even in half-sleep.
Maybe oranges are a metaphor for life.
Maybe I still don’t know how many seeds
I’m gonna find in you.
Maybe oranges are just supposed to mean summer heat
because I’m sick of all this cold, cold, cold.
Maybe it doesn’t matter.
Maybe the only thing that means something
is that I am always waking up in the middle of the night
and reaching out to you.
You with those warm hands.
You with that wet mouth.
Little Matchstick Girl
Have you ever noticed how wanting
burns you up
from the inside out?
Like one moment I am whole,
but then I hear
your voice on the phone
and I swear to god
three blocks away from here
they can smell smoke.
Ask Again Later
I miss you so much it feels gross.
It feels wet. It feels nauseating.
I want to rip out my heart
and shake it like a Magic 8 Ball.
Is this okay, is this okay, is this okay,
or does it make me weak?
Coffee Cups and Fruit Poems
Five hours since I heard it last,
I miss your voice again.
There is something to be said for all of this missing
but I do not know what it is.
I just know that it feels right to say it.
I miss you.
I miss you.
Like coming down from a caffeine high,
I’m still figuring it out.
Oh, boy. Oh, man. Oh, you mess.
What right do you have to leave me like this?
Questioning all of my other love poems.
Writing odes to fruit
and thinking about the taste of you.
I miss you.
I miss you in some wild way.
Some rain smell on the earth kind of way.
Some scratching your name into trees kind of way.
Some scratching my name into you kind of way.
Even this poem is me marking my territory.
Tell me this counts for something.
To Be a Metaphor for Starlight
I write about you
like I wouldn’t mind scalding my mouth on you.
I write about mountains,
and stars,
and the curve of you:
some hiker’s trail spine I’d like to get lost along,
some light in all this dark.
Something wild. Something I’d like to map out.
Something like an earthquake
or a bicycle wreck.
Something I need elbow- and kneepads for.
Twenty metaphors for fucking,
twenty-six for fucking distance
and I still can’t blame you for not wanting to cross it,
for keeping your hands to yourself,
for reading all of these poems and not wanting
to get caught up in the mess.
Not wanting to be a peach
or a bowl of oranges spread out on the bed.
Not wanting to be a metaphor for starlight
or a bottle of Shiraz
The Dogs I Have Kissed Page 3