poetry

a selection of my poetry.

Autumn diptych

i.

It’s so warm for November, and the sky is flush with a long afternoon reluctance. Lacing up my tennis shoes in front of you feels more intimate than I intended, but I need to wear something on my feet or how else am I going to get from here to there. Before, I’d hoped it would be enough to dance alone as I always had: between the darknesses of different planets that only I could find in the nighttime. Before, I’d hoped the vanilla and tobacco of that room — draped in your own private severity, sharp to the touch and oddly, oddly warm — would cover me in enough uncertainty that I’d stop recognizing the most terrifying parts of myself. Maybe then I could learn to break open at the edges, where sandalwood meets the otherside of Neptune, to live just for the fun of it and unfurl into something so vast I can’t see either end of me. Yes, I’d like to burst into a paroxysm of sound, to reach from one end of this cold universe into another altogether, to discern the differences between your thousands of voices, and more. To know you as myself, racing down Briarcliff Road, adorned in rings of ice, possessed by a tremendous desire to leave. In an unfamiliar sky, I’m staring at two lost stars. One wants to be found.

ii.

    It’s warm for a November evening.
            My face is completely flushed.

                                I unlace my tennis shoes.
                    There’s no moving from here tonight.

        Sometimes, I dance alone;
            sometimes, I smell of vanilla and tobacco.

    I’ve tried to fold up my own boundlessness
only to explode into a freezing sound.

                    So know that if you see something running
                            down Briarcliff, that’s you and not me.

            Look out to the horizon.
        There are two suns.

                        One is breaking open at the edges.


Nighttime in Conroe

That night, I was called by a certain type of darkness – the type that really knows how to find you. I was a stranger out there, planted on the sidewalk in front of Dollar General: under the yellow glow, I felt washed, and washed, bathed in the waterfall of neon.

Every time a truck passed, I felt a strange need to wave. Sometimes, when I wasn’t looking, one would flash its headlights back at me. I knew this was the world telling me something.

The world says there’s still a way to save my life. There’s a way to go out in the early morning and feel beautiful. To emerge from this skin and remember what it means to be a little bit mad – rather, how impossible it is to forget. The world says it’s okay to be angry.

I say, I’m not angry — I’m just a liar. I want a life, and I don’t want a life. I don’t know what I feel when I see a sunset, but I call it hope. When I kneel in the grass, it’s like I’m telling the earth a story with my body. Though I say I wish I could take it back, I know that isn’t true.

The world says to reveal only what I want to. Someone is listening, and someone is holding onto me in a Dollar General parking lot. Says even if I break down crying in the middle of it, to keep going. Or to just tell the whole story over again.

I ask the world: Do you love me? Still?

I say, tell me again. Again.

Late at night, a truck passes through.


March

From what I can tell,
there’s nothing trustworthy
about being alive.

Even so, I wake up
ready to take my turn
at the helm, peering
across an unfamiliar road,
thinking I have never seen
a sky so blue in my life
though I thought the same thing
yesterday.

Today,
I walk with myself
along the Chattahoochee.
Each footstep crunches
in a new way, and if
this morning isn’t a prayer
it’s something close.

The squirrels are quiet,
and so am I. How much the world
has to say. The kind of shelter
offered by the trees. A river
erupting into daylight.

For a moment, I forget
what it means to be alive.

I am, anyways.


How to be alone

In the place between existences
I press my body against peeling wallpaper
trying to take a step towards you.

I know everything, but I have a lot of questions.

What I mean is do you think it might rain.
What I mean is can the cicadas smell your goodness
otherwise what is making that incredible sound.

What I mean is I won’t look away,
but will you forgive me when I appear
so, so afraid.

I was listening for solitude when you
opened the door. Isn’t that a kind of
loneliness. An endless staircase.
The longest road in the world.

When I tell you I am not here,
know that I am still here. Just
too uneasy to dance. To whistle
at strange birds. To speak aloud
in the daytime. To sustain.

Here’s hoping that what’s gone
isn’t gone. I don’t want to hate
anything. I want a miracle winter
in June. How much snow to
cover my tracks. How much snow
to reveal an invisible girl.

How good do I look in white!

In a way, I want to become everything
just to give myself to you.

When nobody is looking, could I be anything.
The wind blowing through your hair.
The sunlight sprawled across your skin.

Between existences, I close our distance halfway.

Can I ever reach you.