studying

I took a little step forward to see how it functioned
and then I understood

there were some things I was still studying

and there were some things
I ought to review more

like sitting on her college twin reading mary oliver aloud
and the way her tears blue and unstoppable, ceased

in the willingness to be together in that moment
a simple stopper to an endless sadness.

love is so endless and so precious
both the rock and the moss
and the fly and the sunlight moving across it

like his fingers pressed to mine on the other side of the foggy pane
and the way he breathes no longer but I hold him still 

some where within me

there is a knowledge that this is
never ending.

the junk collector

I am caressing old wounds like a junk collector

picking each one up tenderly and replaying the memory

and to the outsider it might look as though I am holding

something broken, something useless, a vessel for an old hurt

that no longer serves me (and that someone would be right).

I try to find a way to no longer be that sixteen year old girl

craving approval and feeling hurt so sharply that I have to turn my head

let it seep into the years ahead instead.

Oh all my junk is so lovely, but it weighs me down

a constant reminder of everything I've ever found.

Maybe I need to lose some more things,

build a pack that fits through the door.

Maybe I need to sell some things,

and then once I'm done sell a few more.

body

Trying to find a place to land my mind

Am I a fool for trying to bend the time?

I keep on breaking everything that I have built

I'm eloquent and I am shrouded in my guilt

They say that’s you

We just stay in our boxes

Doing what we do

She says that’s grief

Let it flow through your body

Am I romanticizing a fault?

Hypothesizing it all?

I keep on wanting everything that I don’t have

Inventing new and cruel ways to make myself sad

They say that’s you

We just stay in our boxes

Doing what we do

She says that’s grief

Let it flow through your body

I say that’s me

And I don’t always believe

I say that’s me

And I don’t always believe

So you want an answer

So you want relief

So you want compassion

So you want to be free

So you want an answer

So you want eternity

So you want to be forgiven

So you want to be free

They say that’s you

We just stay in our boxes

Doing what we do

She says that’s grief

Feel it in your bones 

Let it hold your body

Your body

Your body

Your body

Your body

tender

there are certain tendernesses I cannot handle

like the intimacy of a shared clothes rack

underwear and socks hung side by side

in a sort of domestic solidarity that seems to imply

everything and nothing at the same time

the meaning that is embedded in the practicality

of a life lived in the same spaces

the closeness that is inevitable and so precious

as we move through these spaces

breaking apart and trying valiantly

to hold ourselves together we insist to one another

take this here please take this relief

as we cannot offer it to ourselves

not now

everything is growing that is not supposed to

like intrusive thoughts in the recesses of the mind

onions sprouting fingers green and reaching 

from the papery bulb shedding, shedding

can i learn from this fragile breaking apart

I toss them in the compost bag the synthetic green offensive somehow

a heaviness that is permanent

permaness I want to say but that is not a word

it is a made up word in between spanish and english

tangled in a way that I am not often do I have a right to be

this halfness , when I log in to try to right this poem

google asks me for my home address and I click the button

that says not now.

after yesterday, before tomorrow

after yesterday, before tomorrow

will you tell me something?

the secret to not holding my breath

but breathing in the infinitesimal space between

like the gap of two hands pressed tightly together

always holding a space for

solitude.

I will never make a perfect decision

I will never make a perfect decision

each one tainted with the possibility of the other

infinite impossible collages of the mind

no substance but the cyclical pain of fruitless repetition

at the moment of the jump there is no evidence

no argument that will make you see the bad you 

will sustain for the good you have not yet known, to understand your 

own resilience the truth that comes only with time

nothing but a blind faith

or a shred of

reckless optimism

can save you in that moment

logic futile

only now

the letting go

the trusting that

something will hold you.

tender(ness)

this morning I awake from a dream of you

still dripping from the shower

naked and looking down at me with a tenderness

and the shared secret of that mutual excitement

reflected between us like a prism

and the hope of you 

hands on my arms

and the memory that you

did so

I am beginning to understand I think

the way nothing makes sense

the way we can never see what piece it is

we are holding in our hands

we were not children this was a dream

and I lived it and passed out from it

life is a series of awakening from dreams

and I feel that acutely

I am tender

I am tender to that tenderness