Another piece of me you don't care to meet

Don't you tire?

Knowing it all and

dismissing my words

as hateful,

and say I'm always 

telling you

How to talk,

How to act,

I am explaining

what I meant,

While you correct 

my word choice.

I feel like crying,

Just to choke it back,

Cause I know it would

Only upset you more.

birthed

Diabolical diatribe,

atop a double helix

on which I slide, splash 

into the gene pool

another unwanted curse.

so complicated

He doesn't know, but

I remember your face,

in the dining room, open

mouth but silent sobbing.

Your stepdad, suicide,

drove to the Grand Canyon.

He asks why I make things

so complicated. If I could,

I would reference Avril,

but he doesn't know.

As off by chance and

youth, I'd be so simple,

he thinks he knows

me so well, but what about

the million minutes before?

clandestine time

He asks if I got that

word from work but

shrug, couldn't say

it was plucked from

one, lone neuron

where memories are

safely locked away.

It's fenced in times

where hurt flowed over

like root beer and 

sprinklers, little

times last meet

before I became 

what I am today.

all is you

New Moon in Pisces 

come dip in the chilled water,

bite into the bubblebee sting,

press the tip of your tongue to 

the frost-covered grass, awake

to sunlight and peonies and know

I love you. Yes, you,

who is all the joy and

hope that permeates my life.

ain't no one here gonna surrender or leave

I'm not a runner with

short breath and light feet.

I'm beak bent, head bowed, fold

in another twig to our home.

Blackhawk flies overhead

shaking the shack and our

hearts. Military towns sound

just like warzones because

they're always preppin'

to attack or be attacked,

just like us two.

slumber

See how stars slowly slip

and slide along the Earth's slope

edging toward the horizon, leap

into the sky wide as infinity 

my mind shrivels

at the expanse

unravelling my nerves

wrapped around the world

another segment

small and hollow

rest my head and eye gaze up

the dark envelope

sleep.

pretend

None of us will wake up to tomorrow

instead

we always arise to today

Yet just as I want to see my skull 

and know that it looks like everyone's

I am paused

the strings between the things

I only know of in theory

as if we are not real

but a list imaginary.

android souled

My love for you

is encrypted in binary, 

ones and zeros,

screaming adoration.

Coded in pixels of pictures,

silent in fear your replies,

don't mean the same.

Reaching through satellites

and wavelengths, particles

of air and time, 

can you hear me?

Hear the desperation

and bundled secrets,

fears beyond phones.

Through the atmosphere

can you feel me, is this real?

Is the energy I feel between

the lines of text,

static or electricity? 

please. don't.

There isn't time for me

to parrot all the lines 

I've said before, lies I said

as I ran from who I really am.

Please don't be mad, that I

pushed so hard, I couldn't be

the person I claimed I was.

Now you are in the crosshairs

of the world I made, the untruth

Tower, crumbling down. 

Please don't.

hopeful

If hope were a thing with feathers,

I'd have flown past the cosmos

by now. I'd float through space

unbridled, untethered, unheard.

But hope is an anchor, holding

me down, tied to a place, tied 

to a person, tied to the dream

that some things will change.

sorry

I tiptoe in my home

for over a decade

because husbands

are like mothers

overbearing in silence

other room

spiteful my existence

so sorry I am present

and not a present

to you.

stolen time

How we knew each other,

when I a mere girl and you,

just a boy; when hope was 

snuck out through windows

and nightfall's dark. Stowed

away in corners and shadows,

before you'd live in vacant lots,

on the run from warrants, and 

the children you harmed, but

not how we hurt each other

when we were young.

the man

Remember in youth

when we were going

to stick it to the man,

but then we let him 

stick it in us, and

shrugged he could

stick around and 

then our stick figures

were stuck, matchstick

in mollases mud.

in the dark

The air smells of toasted marshmallow,

I can see Orion and I think Mars, but

I'm not certain. Neighbor's light turn on,

Motion sensor, a big bunny hops by.

Just like that, another day, another life,

Another night, I let pass on by.

marital dispute

There's plastic bats twisted in the tree from Halloween,

You, exasperated, say I'm crying over nothing,

so I drive to work sucking my thumb, 

the same hand as my diamond ring.

where love lives

Love is the small cat foot prints

pressed and splayed in white, 

glittering snow blanketing the ground.

Frozen but moving slow.

Maple syrup poured from spout

onto hot French toast, crisp 

fragrant scent of vanilla and ambition.

Youth vibrant, ready to go.

Fields in pretty playful pockets,

flowers heaving with life between 

highways and ready to burst forth

levarage wild, dividends of joy.

bare

Moments ago I thought of how

you took a nude photo of me

asleep on my stomach in bed

so as my bare ass peeked ever 

so slightly, it was a crescent.

I didn't know till much later.

And even laterer you lost

that phone, that picture,

that moment. And so I am

just faceless naked sleeping

woman with a chagrin crack.