When I would transport when I would soak the calm when I would drown my patience to overcompensate ambition for legs of steel to new continents.

fleurisms:

i wish i could write good

like gabby gabby or marie calloway or that one guy or
kate zambreno

because i read her book, green girl, and i really liked it

and i wish i could write like that and relate to others girls like me

because girls caan be cool but i’m not a cool girl

like the part about feeling like you

always have to ask permission to do anything

i feel like that all the time

hi am i allowed to cut my hair?

hi am i allowed to smile at strangers?

hi am i allowed to wear this dress?

hi am i allowed to talk to you when i want to talk to you?

sometimes i respond to your yes sometimes i respond to your no

but you are always dictating and i will always translate imprecisely
what you want

i’m a spooky freaky weirdo who doesn’t kno how to talk to people

so i wish i could write good so i could just leave people

little post-it notes everywhere and they could read them

and think my tongue is broken

and not my brain

because it really is but not the way people normally think a tongue is broken

like a cat doesn’t have it

and it didn’t get cut out

i just don’t know how to use it other than in a mouth or on your dick

and fuck i just spilled apple juice on white fabric

it’s gonna look like a piss stain

this time i hit myself with hammers

bruises are buttons to press when i’m lonely get a rise out of me

a real fucking standing ovation

congratulations for being mediocre

you can write the book on it

blue-lidded flames (like blueberry sunburns)
your rough skin, as i imagine
my soft skin (i know it’s soft)
baby lips (written all over)
you were a solar flare
(ruined all the
weather in my aura)
with a hop in your step
(ruined all the)
forecasts said sunny
with a chance of hurricanes (and
lightning, blueberry lightning)
tu voudrais seulement moi toute seule.
never never never
won (ready ready ready)
third time’s the charm
forgot five times (unlucky numbers
worse than superstition)
but where there’s routine
where there is day to day to day
to fucking day
(there is room for error)
like buying dusty books on
a 78 degree spring morning
you live in a world beyond the borders
of my twenty/twenty vision correction
on espére rompre le cou du monde (le coeur du monde).
shake what my mother gave me (my hands
when i am nervous or exhausted)
collected blueberry raindrops
from a hole in the shoddy-shingled roof
(did such a goddamn job)
to put me in a constant layer of
satin-finished memorytape
(minimal effort key to maximally achieved overture)
quit looking at forecasts
for other cities.

you remind me of how many miles i missed the moon

i used to be good at cartwheels.
i used to be good at somersaults.

i am a goddamn mess.
i am a god’s damned tra-ge-dy.

j’attends le printemps
j’attends l’été
je s’accroche à l’automne
je redoute l’hiver avec mon corps tout entier

more than your parted mouth

more than your pretty bird

maybe a pretty baby

a promise is a promise is cuts on my little finger

Honest people are always more beautiful. They appeal to me more than honey or alcohol.

the uprooting started long before your interventions, and besides, you’re still just little, tiny rocks. even if I wanted to, there’s no place for me to settle, i’m no cactus, i’m no daylily.

when the numb wind blows me over, it’ll knocked me down, of course. i could crawl up on the shores, rubbing my wounds with your sand, hoping my skin, in time, would grow to love every grain I’ve passively embedded. it would be another trick up your sleeve, another maneuver you’ve pulled to bury my legs and construct the moat and wet sand walls around me. I could play along, braiding my hair with seaweed and whistle when the tide approaches, but when will it feel like solid ground to call home? then i’ll stall the dizzying ebb and flow of the rivers and their estuaries.

when will this feel like home?

how i wish,
pour the atoms into
a metal cast

Gently, I placed old broken glasses in the cupboard with the plastic bowls, behind the rotting wood and rusted hinges, and pressed tightly to make sure the doors would not fly open at the sound of your name that I say in my sleep and held it firmly to reinforce my faith in floodgates and physics.

we tried campfires and flashlights,
but we left either overwhelmed or uninspired.
we tried roman candles and lighthouses,
which were worthy, but also unwelcome
by the transient ghosts and overbearing mothers.

so i chose paper lanterns to assuage and allay
because they make red silhouettes and
i feel infallible beneath it.
your face and shoulders look forlorn and wistful that way,
homesick for the curve of my neck and collarbone.

but me, i’m gut-sick, for the
fate of the blossoms in my body, in bloom for seventeen years.
with no intentions to cut back our tangled vines but instead,
to cut our hair to hide how much we’ve grown.

we measure our height by the kitchen door’s frame,
and our hearts by the resonance of gratitude,
but i somehow confused the two when they called me a lamb.
you always favor the spring’s metaphor and
the smallest words.

last night there was no gold glow to my cheeks,
no evidence of blood flow or sensation on my lips.
only blue, blue light from our living room television set
because i can’t fall asleep
without watching the inside of my eyelids.

darkness can’t belong to us,
if it did we’d see by the moon’s reflection and
navigate by the echoes of our solitary names,
but we already claim too much,
so leave something for the bats and owls.

no, darkness doesn’t belong to us
because we need to drink the sunlight and warm milk.
we must uproot our bodies or leave them
to shed some light in a room.

i only wanted to be the light in a room.

and my ears lie to me and my eyes lie to me and my head makes my mouth say things that my thoughts can’t complete.