i keep remembering
how persistently you tried
to untangle me
but it hurt too much
& i was never strong enough
to untie your knots
you undid me,
once,
it left
marks
i keep remembering
how persistently you tried
to untangle me
but it hurt too much
& i was never strong enough
to untie your knots
you undid me,
once,
it left
marks
and these days
when i touch myself
i think of the other ways
i’ve been made to move
the protrusion on the
posterior side of your shoulder,
not the wing but the bump,
not the blade but the bud
is called the acromion
the clean ridge
that rises along your hips, emerges
from waistband,
leaving pockets of shadow
smooth enough to permit a hand:
the iliac crest
and i remember, the pressure
you’d apply to my skin, fingers
kneading fruitless
mistaking my tension
for moan
the slow and heavy
search
up and along
so close almost inside me
i could feel you pressed up
against my bones
“i think of life as
a series of infinite
verticals”
and when you write them down
you collapse them
into—
not much:
here, images.
the glowing ember of a cigarette
in the grass. and
the tortoiseshell of that musician’s
glasses. and
his hand in the small of my back
expectant between
instinct and
almost
and i’ve been cold a lot, lately—
pulling off my clothes, my panties
catching on my ankle, my bare feet
glistening with dew
but there’s something really beautiful
about how skin soaks up dusk
and holds it. like how i was talking about
shadows, in film— the grain, that
lushness— like burying your hands in sand
so rich and particulate, you
couldn’t free yourself
if you tried
this is a love poem.
the first time i ever set foot here,
i was eighteen, and bleeding. a smear
of red lipstick on my chin—
i wrote about it later. my tights
unspooled on the floor,
the way kissing you was like
a battle i couldn’t win.
a year later and i’m letting the ice
in my bourbon melt while you dance in your
mismatched socks, eyes
bright with the promise of a lady
who loves you like new soil,
fresh coffee grounds,
sweet cool water in a mason jar—
and sometimes i throw around that word, love,
but it’s been a year, and we’ve walked
our labyrinths together: two easters
of dried palms on your windowsill,
and an empty bottle of hermes perfume.
“i’ve been drinking whiskey
because of you,”
i said.
“i’m glad,”
you answered.
“i still don’t know what liquors are good.”
“you don’t have to, baby bird.”
and i want to tell you
last night i danced so hard
across campus
that my bra came undone—
me, scurrying into becton plaza,
hands fumbling above that
lace slip that i still thought it’d be ok
to wear outdoors,
and sweat everywhere. the night air
cool on my skin,
the salty hook-and-eye, the
flushed repinning, or not—
i thought about taking it off entirely,
throwing it black-and-pink
lingerie into the courtyard
my body suddenly undone
and free, like my ribs
had uncaged themselves
and i could breathe again
i stopped writing for a bit
because i was too busy living and being caught up
in you.
i’m on number twenty four now.
in poem-days, we met a month ago.
if i’d kept writing even with you
always with your arm around my shoulder
there would have been five more days,
i guess.
a year ago someone called me a bonfire.
“you’re dazzling at night,”
he said. but in the daytime,
smoke. ash. missing things.
and maybe i choke, spit heat,
sparks, maybe i’m hot,
maybe it’s true like my roommate said
boys just want to fuck me
but the name my mother calls me
when i am her girl means smoke
in vietnamese.
and i disappear into crowds.
and i kiss hard and mean everything.
last night i sat in the circle
next to a boy whose stubble
once left a sweet red blotch
on the side of my mouth.
smoke was blowing everywhere.
i was drinking red wine out of a mason jar
and i stretched out my legs
to catch the warmth
even though at times
it felt like i was burning
this was the summer of my senior year—
my hair was just beginning to be long then;
hadn’t acquired the mythic status
i cut short
with a pair of clippers
last saturday when i got high in n’s backyard
and knotted a dandelion around my joint
but i digress.
i was in love with a boy then. i don’t
remember much of that trip: the kayak, the drive up,
mt hood wreathed in wispy clouds,
the fat black flies that bit my ears till they bled,
and the lake spread out and glimmering.
deep enough to dream in, and resonant
somehow.
and i was young enough then to dive in
with all my clothes on,
scratch my skin on the stones
that i could see clear through to the bottom,
and ragged pines.
and a blue dragonfly.
and some baptism,
maybe,
i lost a ring there, swimming.
silver. i didn’t wear it much.
dove for it over and over again.
but sometimes a lost thing
doesn’t want to be found.
and i was sitting there on the bench with my head in my hands,
trying to cram the entire night
down my throat
even though i was full of so much everything
i didn’t think i could swallow
i had already told three people that night
i was going to die and they had laughed
and i saw you loping over:
you pulled me up, saw me home,
guided me up the spiral staircase with your hand
in the small of my back while i wobbled,
unsteady as the calf who refuses to learn
that love is something you can also receive
and standing together in front of the mirror
you silently filled a mug with water and handed it to me.
i was fiddling with a bruise
on the side of my neck
rosy as a plum.
“i can’t,” i said. looking into the depths.
there was a glimmer of light
at the bottom
and i wanted to catch it without
doing any of the work, the gulp, the hard swallow.
“please,” you said
and so i tried.
i’m in an era of incompletion—
baggy gray sweater,
stray bleach-blonde bangs,
ducking to hide from security
on a roof. c’mere. shh.
i couldn’t find the right way to get up
the second time
when i took you. walked in circles
trying to navigate by the stars,
i was that foolish.
but we made it
and looked down four flights:
that dizzy zenith,
i held my breath.
and for an hour we sat there
among the generators and the graffiti,
my old sharpie tag,
rusty goliaths,
bathed in the milky glow
of the parking lot lights
in the longest silence
i think i’ve ever felt.
well, the honey in it makes it
sweet, or at least a little sweeter,
and after those evenings
sitting drinking bourbon
on the bed of that
sharp-tongued woman you love,
you’ve grown to like the burn:
that heavy warmth, thicker
than a wool sweater.
today your hair smells like roses
and your tongue feels nice.
your whole mouth numb
with the blazing of it.
last night you fucked as quietly
as possible, just because
you were happy
and wanted to try something new
and you giggle with the memory of it.
you’re sitting in a small concert hall,
still a little bit tipsy in the yellowgold
of wednesday afternoon,
listening to someone sing shakespeare
in french. your cheeks are pink.
you keep touching your lips.
is a girl
in a little flowered sundress
biking with a bouquet of yellow roses
sticking out of her backpack
i’m imagining where this night air has been
before it came curling round
our shoulders.
there’s a particularity to it,
a late spring smell,
a richness, a wetness, like
all of the flowers and all of the leaves
decided to get really fucked up &
i’m picturing this breeze
with its roots off the coast
that one beach i keep writing about
& think i love— that
mouthwatering september sky
sand in my pockets,
floral-print underwear: the panties with
tiny roses on, and salty denim shorts
well, no, lush is really the word i’m looking for
and i suppose i could also say
drunk
