The Good Idea Reassurance Hang-out

I forgot
that we
smile
as we
kiss

I tell
you I don't think
its a good idea

and you moan
a deep throaty moan
and look at me
with falsely innocent
eyelashes
that don't distract me
from what i know
is on our
mind

i say
i won't tell
my mother
about the taste of your
lips

about your cheek against mine

about the underside of your
neck that
holds the whisper
of my first bruises

but i do
anyway

she tells me
its
all right.

somewhere in queens

a blue walled room
a little boy in two languages
a rice cooker that is always cooking
multicolored legos strewn across the floor
six guitars too many
a black and grey bedspread
six guitars too few
a bathroom with a white toiletbowl
a shower curtain
a cupboard full of pills
a closet of winter coats
lots of tiny shoes
a tv playing soccer
eighteen photographs
a circle of glass shards
shampoo that smells like fruit
books on stalin
a soccerball used indoors
a plastic scooter
a package full of grapes
sun-in under the sink
a floor shelf of records
a counter top
a cross
a self-portrait from an elementary school art class
an ant
recycling
condoms
a picture of a grandfather
a train named 'salty'
a piece of paper on the fridge
you

ode (messy thoughts draft)

i.

this jagged skyline does not cut my ribs
i love it and i see it painted across the skyline
and i think this is mine
holy shit this is all mine
and i will tell you all the train stops from
A to Z baby I will whisper in
your ear the names of neighborhoods
as they whisk by--bushwick,
williamsburg, look out for pickle
riding hipsters, bay ridge, where
once i saw a snowman get his
face hit in by a baseball bat,
downtown brooklyn, and you thought
that times square had a good view, this
water shimmers like the darkest silk
against my thigh---

i will weave bridges in my hair, grey and red
like a barette, loop the manhattan blue
around a ponytail just before I curve around
and let the staten island ferry scratch my
back, my knee on governor's island, my
eyes on the shore peering deep within, let the taxi smoke
waft upwards, come and coat me in smog sin---

ii.

i will take you on the subway, from the first car
to the last, show you people that i might know from my future
from my past, i can't wait to sit on blue seats and jam
headphones in my ear, watch the lady stand alone
as the sun slowly disappears

let me show you all my city
from the lobby to the tip
i will show you jagged skylines
not as bright as my face lit

for whenever i am back here
when i see the buildings tall
i can feel it in my stomach
how in love with this i fall.

i can feel it in my stomach
i will give away it all.

last night when i couldn't sleep
i ended up thinking about you
obviously
and i just remember under covers
thinking of hugging you and
everything being
all right
no kissing no bareness no sex
just hugging
and everything soft and warm
and me just happy to see
a friend that i had been apart from for so long
again.

you always thought
i looked so
good
in this sweater
you said you had a picture of me
forever in your mind
leaning against that table
the white knit
hugging me in
all the right places
my soft blue
jeans tight
against my
legs
and you looking
at me
and
thinking

wow.

Looking back
I laugh aloud
to realize how
tumultuous
it always
was.

i won't let myself go there.

thinking twice about who to put as my emergency contact
on the first permission slip i've ever signed, running upstairs
to show my poem proudly only to be confronted by two uninterested
people, texting my brother about his plans for the day,
some days i feel this distance more than others.

give it time she texts me
and i imagine taking a spoon and feeding
this bruise minutes--piled up high and steaming seconds
what would this pain even look like?
i envision the deepest of purples,
the cold color of beady seagull eyes, the dark when you
open your eyes in bed and can't see your hand absorbed in front of you,
would it sparkle like a rock or glint like a knife?
perhaps both, i think,
its mouth open like a gaping black hole.

"Escher"-Chilly Gonzales

in the morning
i wake up wrapped
in grey light thinking about
you thinking about dreams and
scribbling them in notebooks
as if they will be read one day
by someone-----and they will be
even if it is only me on a train
on a plane deep in a chair reliving
the time