Scattered

I am most comfortable on rainy days when I write your name over and over covering the windowpane. I know the storm you are and it has leaked outward and now it is my own. No broken hinges or apologies. You were never anything but yourself with me.

I am not accustomed to the strangeness of my skin that's bereft without you beside me. My hands do not know what to make of this strange heat that comes from an unknown source. I sit in the window to cool as the moon skinny dips on my face, I am reminded of the fullness of your mouth. And I hunger for a little of the summer we first met before everything scattered, and we got lost like toys that don't belong to grown ups anymore.


6/25/2017 

Shadow Girl

the past tastes like a place I no longer wish to visit
so I've washed my hands clean of the soot 
I cannot bury what is left of us
the sweet Balm of Gilead nights 
the songs of the crickets
as the fan blew the pages of the calendar 
like it too was blowing us away
I cannot give you back the songs you sang
or the nights I lay next to you and breathed
in this world because you did too
I cannot give you back your youth
or free you from the ghosts
that shackled you to a pasted summer dream
that didn't fit once you tried it on
I miss your laughter
and the bedtime secrets we used to share
they're still there safe between our two hearts
I cannot detonate the destruction that stuck to you
like your shadow
and there's not enough bleach to wash away
the wrongs that haunted you
tearing your belief
in good things to shreds like sawdust
our red bird wishes, your lace and bobby pin curls
and everyone that left you left me too
but we both know
sometimes lipstick is messy, so is glitter
and we're never quite ready for the taste
of hard liquor or roving hands and rolling eyes
the kind of wiring that trips us up
you showed me how it looked to walk in the darkness
I forgot how it felt in the light


Love is love, sometimes it has its own layers and variations. So too the love of sisters.

Red Geraniums

my thoughts spill over like
mismatched socks
and I've got piles of them
refrigerator empty of drink
the kind that tastes good
but numbs quickly
the walls are empty now
the pictures stashed in an
overcrowded closet
too many stories in the eyes 
of all my loves

I've bypassed lots of traps
I saw beauty spill from absolute
nothing but marrow soaked in pain 

I got burned once or twice
got lust mixed up with love
tried to cage it
then I wrote it off as a romantic idea
it was everything I wanted to avoid
like black ice

all the squandered sunsets
I thought I'd have a million
sorry now I wasted even one

and the red geraniums by the door
scenting the summer air
were so simple in elegance
but I never found words for them
 

Wingless

when whispered
love falls silent
does it dissolve like
sugar in water
rewritten into a slur
a summer once ago
long removed
an idea that lost us
all we were
we were too unavailable

do we undress and find a stranger
borrowing our skin
we don't know ourselves anymore
and all that look our way
will see they are the reason 
we are a bird
removed from our wings

Beautiful Rogue

he likes fast cars, the ones with creative edges
and curves that look as if an artist built them
and the feel of a beautiful woman in love with him
he doesn't cheat on purpose
he says he's impulsive
he's a big dreamer
a charmer
always spending yesterday's money 
tomorrow's lack will be overlooked
overdrawn, a bitter honey
he's a runner
more responsibility than one man can handle
he breaks inside for eyes he hasn't glimpsed in years
they color his dreams but he won't change his mind
change rattles around in his pocket
with buckeyes for luck
his roof will leak but he has a car
he can survive in the forest
society is the jungle he fears

beauty adored
logic ignored

poor handsome beautiful rogue
could never see nineteen years
of aching in her eyes
she loved him too much to tell him
he was everything her mama said he was