moment/momentum/momentous

seeing the picture of you in the hockey rink
my stomach shivers, the warmth of the moment in the cold
the feeling of you and it real, it often such a dream
warm and cold at the same time you say
our fingers aren't blue as we shake next to each other
to grab your hand, to sit beside and watch you in awe
of the simplicity, my insides shivering like a flame
figuring how to make our happinesses intersect
the space in between a cocoon in which to exist
out in the world we trade glances
all newness, like the ice in front of us
and the players gliding, falling and bouncing up
sticks and pucks, graceful and fierce
guarding and daring, taking chances in heavy armor
when the whale fills up with snow, find me in its core
we'll tunnel in the melting diamonds
living in the moment in the space of its chest
we can both be jonah, you and me
as they skate below us in time
fingers gliding, tracing limbs
momentous sublime.

i have to find a way for this to be enough

your words across a page

the memory of your face upon the pillow

to push it at an arm’s distance

the gold in my hand glittering

at an arm’s distance

at the distance i can understand.

without reservation

her face flipping in my mind, back and forth
right in front of me, this shyness
her eye staring and her mouth saying nothing

and the moment after i say the words
shivering on the concrete
she is standing there watching me
and she says them back

the ending i didn't bear to believe
the ending i didn't even think of
just the need to say the words, to not have
them rattling around inside of me for another two weeks

two weeks two weeks
wanting it all at once, to drown in the sugar dangerous
this extension silent torture as i awake from feverish dreams
oh yesterday feels like it was just a dream

your soft cheek and the way you twisted your legs around mine
the way you let me in beyond
lying there breathing in the silence
letting me hear the things you shouldn't have noticed but did

and now we're in this inbetween space
and i wish you were here with me actually

wanting to ditch all my history, feeling fully once again
the weight the power of simple side by side existence
that makes me feel so happy and so sad

these simple things to live for
the softest things that break us

that i know will break me, will shatter me, even as i try not to look into a future i don't understand

all i want to do is hold you right now
and not try to understand.

dia de los muertos

i feel like i’m hurting a lot right now and i don’t really understand
why still seeing you walking down the street and choosing to ignore you can derail me
imagining you with your hands on my face painting it white
imagining your laugh, the dab of the black on your fingers
your swinging cross on the chain, the jesus above your bed
the way your hood was pulled tightly around your face as you walked by
as i pretended you didn’t exist as a way to grasp blindly for some sort of power
the hurt that is worse for being inadvertent

unfinished business that i’m beginning to realize you may never finish
that keeps hurting

and the way we walked around new haven that night
faceless, invigorated by the mask glued right above our skin
you calling your mother and watching me trying to read me in the watson basement
the mask that you created not letting you in

i feel its return now
as it raises from below my skin
like when we watched coco and i looked over at you and you were silently weeping
an action i had never seen on you
the hurt that makes us turn mean to protect ourselves

as you danced with me without caring in the abandoned plaza
and asked me if i was even hispanic months later

the light and the heavy becoming confused
indistinguishable to the untrained eye

that wasn’t there to feel the punch in the gut
or the surge of an inexplicable happiness---

the kind you don’t want to speak of
that glows golden on the inside of your skin

a warm secret against your chest.
and as we pass I feel cold

steeling myself into feigned ignorance
beyond the smile i know is on your face every familiar detail pains me
lingering inside for the rest of the night
in ways i can't explain.

monday nights

sitting here in my room

mackenzie’s voice in my ear

as she imagines her children

dressing them in twenty years

she says on sundays they’ll do art

talk about feelings and play tunes

she turns life into visions

fantasies of full moons

she says her mother tells her not to daydream

not to plan the future out

that things could be unexpected

the way it all turns out

but sitting here in this chair

listening to her spin her life

i think how the story is the point

as a dream not a design

and sitting here i think maybe i ought to make lists
the romantic poem & the one i love, that i think
is lost in the early morning truck eyes--
fragments of poems i once wrote, following
me around in their unfinished lyrics, giving me
warmth and coldness with their half-taken breaths, and I,
searching for warmth now. fingers numb
like frozen purple plums in the icebox, like
faces when the blood seeps out, enjambing all over the place
to try and replicate? the state of my thoughts, to
try and write something worth following. and yet
everything is poetry, the books not written to be so,
the cars as they splash dirty water on the granite curbs
of earlier times are poetry, the man with his wet hat brim
is poetry, even the car that honks at me late night as
i walk home from the library, the figure that yells, "how's it going good looking?"
is poetry. the poetry not just the elongated pain of self narration
of wanting a you and not wanting you, there is poetry in
not saying anything. there is poetry in the underpass of the
highway that tore the neighborhood apart. poetry in the planners
and poetry in the families. there is poetry in the way the writer writes
about it one hundred years later, and you can see her hair up at the nape of her neck
her light notes and late nights in a library, her love, there is poetry
in her simple love. and maybe its like raab said,
it is not in putting all the details together. i do not know of an epic poem.
i do not know of a grand designed structure that could fit this all in one.
an anthology of everything from the center of the sole of your shoe, to the birthmark
above an eyebrow. maybe the pieces after all are enough. or maybe i focus
on the word enough too much these days.

a hot pink hairbrush

i hate you so much!
you have no compassion!
heartless!

you are unaware of how to be nice to other people!

and yet!

i keep coming back!

how can i mistreat myself so!

how can i devalue myself so!

how can i let myself wallow so!

saturday morning

i'm sitting here thinking about writing not to a you
but to a softer eyed reader
thinking about her, and making her mixtapes
a summer of unexpected friendships and old ones
of giving myself without reservation and reveling in the lack of hesitation

us seated around a black ikea dinner table
or switching spots on couches
all calling out the wrong names

on the beach with our toes in the sand
grains in the pizza box
and wine in the plastic cups
feeling the evening twinged with that high school angst
but feeling fuller with the long island sound spread out in front of me
and the city lights

wondering to myself--how did I get here?
but happy to have found my way.

(wanting this morning to be able to hold onto this
to have this measured confidence in a pebble
warm against my thigh)

“He has this ponytail you don’t forget” -mm

i think what i want to ask is how are you
but what i say is something else entirely
like we have been trying for years now
speaking to each other in different languages
even as we write in english
giving answers to questions none of us asked
disjointed conversations with each other's shadows
the echoing unsaid syllables in the space between

somehow,
from this we manage semblances of communication
maybe in one-hundred words one resonates in your ear
(for me it is thank you, for you is it yellow?)
we used to exchange thousands on the regular
so many my computer drowns the way i used to
the way i still do whenever i find myself trapped in
their endless mazes, unable to compute to search
and find the meanings illuminated in the cold blue light

i live far away now Henry
all the things i can't say
i wonder at the word can't
shouldn't? don't want to?
i think this is my longest exercise in self-reflection
looking in mirrors and finding myself lost
looking in mirrors in my own eyes

the unwritten letters in the space between
i will forgive almost anything you say
if you write it seriously, if you say it with respect

up neon lights sprinting, you say we are running
and i want to ask: are we running to something or away?

today we sit in wooster square under the trees
the urge to touch you inexplicable
an old itch, unconscious
the thin curve of your fingernails
your folded legs
the space of skin above your shirt

later on my bed i cry to Marina
tears not for you, but for the loss of intimacy
broken in the space between,
known by my mind and not my body

confused that the last time saw each other
we were standing in the snow, kissing.

you talk about so many things,
a baby passing by, the lady behind us asking for my

pocket knife over and over again.
you tell her we should hold the fabric

tauter, so it will cut more easily.
i read your steadfastness as rejection.

my body aching from the not-reaching
from the mental disconnect with how easy

it feels to reach out and reach and bridge the distance.
the distance that is infinite, even as you sit

next to me on this green bench.
the disconnect blinding me even as we walk down
the street together and you joke as though you are
angry at me (you swear you are not) pushing
the lowest buttons you can push
making me bleed at my knees

and when i get home i cry for not being able to touch you
for not being able to be held by someone i once loved

until i see the scrapes you have given me
unconsciously, consciously, cut my knees a thousand times

and i think
maybe i just need to tend to myself.

i give myself permission to hate you.

even if it doesn't make sense.
even if you won't understand.

bumping into people from past lives
pick them up and wonder who they are
how they ever left so many scars
as they ask you how you are

reading myself fall in love with him in reverse
reading myself reflect on growing up
the years another he is about to enter
thinking about growing up the things that linger
the dancing in the rain, in the staircase
the private abandon, the large words
handled carefully to delineate all the small things

you are a phantom that calms me
perhaps i am a ghost that eases your mind
on sleepless nights
wrapped around your pillow
the whisper on the edge of a vision
the unspoken back-up plan under all the plans
that doesn't really fit together
when you straighten it out
the word you wanted to say 
after the first word you wanted to say
after the thing you really meant
really, your third choice
the steady hum of the machine 
under the hum of the machine
inaudible to all but persistent
little but a harmony
you are a phantom that calms me
i am a ghost that eases your mind.

x

lighthouse point on a sunday night in summer

the carnival lights off the highways
are other days
secrets like the half broken silhouettes
heads swallowed in the waves

constellations in the sky
convoluted every way

cosas pequeñitas (y largas)

i.

who has a right to speak on these things

she says it doesn’t matter but it seems like it does, marina says

days later you do this, you think

little things that are fine but leave you thinking

about the darkness of your skin 

for days

ii.

for you have met the boundary

of shared experience

like a golden worm 

it vibrates in the puddle in front of you

as you walk through warm water

you know if you touched skin

it would be glass, maybe porcelain

iii.

in bed you think of how

you say 

my father is from the island

why do you not say I am from the island?

vi.

kiley said

one days these things will come for you

red shoes on a green floor

this is about much more

than a name

v.

your name you can hold

it can hold you

at times you embrace awkwardly

but still

there is warmth

you are strangers

who together are not strangers at all

vi.

it is like an avocado

sliced open

each half heavy in a palm

the pit in the middle must be in one side

or you must get rid of it

once open

how can it be in both sides at once? 

and be whole

vii.

it is like an avocado

so sweet

and 

so slimy

you can not hold an avocado for long

soon enough you must eat it

or put it

down

viii.

and you want to put it down

the exhaustion, the pride

of being the core

something you have always been proud of

something you are almost always

thinking about, something that makes

you narcissus

staring at this puddle in between you

with its golden worm

ix.

can you put the golden worm down?

most times you do not want to touch it

if you cut it in half

would it multiply?

it does not seem like your own battle

you are too preoccupied with your own shadows

x.

who has the right to speak on this?

most days (all days)

you don’t know

cosas pequeñitas

who has a right to speak on these things

she says it doesn’t matter but it seems like it does, marina says

days later you do this, you think

little things that are fine but leave you

thinking about the darkness of your skin 

for days

[martires with marina 2]

i.

it was the green sea
thick
that held them
lots of little fingers
swaying branches
a tender touch
the storm was a plum
how could I have forgotten how much I love you?
the sky tells me to remember.

it's time to go
seashell hair
tortoise freckles
in the shallows
it's really hard to let go
the storm is a plum
laughter in a language I don't understand
a river
not as tired as it used to be
it was the green sea that held them
fingers but no palms
the perfect chesnut
sweet but a little like a tin can
that clatters down the road
a celebration and a
kite, it's getting late she says
i don't have any more words
tonight there are no stars
there are ten thousand tin cans
in the sea
a conversation six days late
like a shadow
over two cups of tea
i am tired
but not hungry
when
five minutes rest
and the crunch of a boot
sickens
there is a puddle
a burnt scalp
a poppy
one euro to see a home inside a cave
it is blue
higher than the others
he kisses the trunk
involuntary smile
I could not capture
obedience humility trust
it is dusk in the city
but noon in this garden
will you hold me as I have been held?
arms attached to fingers
fingers like branches
thick relief
the gate is not closed
there is still a place to sit
chipped green paint
communion dresses
splay in the water
cat cries
slow and soft
but hard to hear---
i'd like to hold you back
no waves bursting
just chests
here, my hands clenched
for you, an offering
honest but not clear
it was a mirror
a mosaic
of simple things

ii.

thank you
i'm sorry
just a little
dizzy in the salt
slippery seaweed
too many tongues
in a bathtub
and the clothes all over the floor
a faulty drain
gives not takes away
i hope that i can learn
how to swim.

[martires with marina 1]

she picks the rosemary
more than is rightfully hers
it is the golden hour
too soft to burn
let's hope the mountains white
are willing to share
the day is a question:
how?

passing through

and yet 

somehow i already know

that i will never want to do this again

that i will never again want the warm curve of your neck

(well yes i will want it but i will never get there)

we will not make mistakes

like i did before.  you are not like that.

you do not make mistakes so lightly.

and when you do i hate it.

hate to see you regress. we will not kiss

again. that apartment, you will move 

out of. you will graduate. you will not

say my name anymore. only sometimes. you will

want to be friends. i do not know if i will be able to.

if i am able to, i will never be able to go back

again. to ignore the way we clash in favor of the

way the curves of our bodies fit together. to forget

the knot in the bottom of my stomach, in favor for

the pleasure of watching you dancing.

watching you dancing

watching you dancing

i think that is what will hurt me the most.

even as i always knew

what i knew. that i was just a phase

you were passing through.

march fifteenth

reading my own words
makes me fall in love with the idea of
sorrow again. drowning has its
benefits. how are you? i want
to type out, touch the iceberg.
but fear. of tongue sticks. and jabs.
real. of being beyond the story.
i am still trying to get beyond the
story now. to get beyond The End.

christchurch

and today for some reason
i find myself unable to breathe
periodically. later the
news pain like the holes of
a sieve, the sand keeps
pouring through. caught particles
like the jolt of air in my throat.
the sudden panic, the sudden pain.
to offer beauty will take time.
to rise above when everything
pulls down. how to understand.
how to remember. how to honor and
how to live. sometimes (most times)
i am unsure. in and out. i am unsure.

are you reading this?

sitting here i’m drowning

drowning in what i used to be

and how many words i gave you

they poured out of me like a river

and you caught them in your hands

but that was yesterday

and now we can’t understand

the languages that we’re speaking

will never be the same

you keep on calling my name

but i can’t hear it anymore