She turned over her arms to show all the roots growing away from her heart. Huddled shadows of skin simultaneously covering her past and revealing it. In ratcheting sketches drawn too close to the surface. In triumphant sobs. All as broken as she was when.

Sallow treasure map she thought as she traced the path from the beginning of her life to its present. Same roads. Different names. Same scars. Drawing different pictures along my arms.

Same reasons. Now. Only more of them.

I'm not going to be one of those...

But you are one of those.

So just take off that corset and breathe.

Sob.

Lament.

Everything you've done.

And worse.

Everything you haven't.

Breathe.

Sob.

Allow it to hurt.

Just this once.

I was over as myself as anyone alive could be. He was under. In molesting jabs that made me feel more a child than a woman. Not that I really knew how it felt. Being a woman per se. Long dresses that sweep the floor in graceful gasps. Pointed heels echoing each stride in a rhythm so suffocatingly syncopated. Just things I'd seen on the television. Images conjured in my head by storybooks. And other lies I was conditioned to believe.

The little girl in her sundress still giggling somewhere under the creases of this burlap I call my skin. The child with a face of clay. Spinning in vain for fingers that never feel. But change her with the slightest touch.

It was nothing anyway.

Two strangers fall in love. And then forget.

Eachother.

Rouge sheets thick with sex. Burst like a blister. And we wipe away the pus.

Two strangers catch each other's names. And we keep those beds. Tuck them in like children desperate for a story.

That ends well.

It was nothing. Just strangers. In lover's clothes.

Blaming that wolf again.

It seemed closer than ever. In the tread of his thoughts as they leveraged their antidotes. Possibility. Pleasure by pleasure. There was the door. So stern. So certain. Of the shadows it would flaunt. In hot repetitions that burned softly on my eager skin. It was arrogant. In the shudder of the bed as I'd try to fall asleep after it was over. He was too. As I recall. As I let the moment find its footing.

In the beginning I did want to be loved. But after a while all I wanted was to prove solitude had faults. The kind that chafe and spill continents into one another. Changing the world. That islands aren't forever.

I've been with him so many times. Drizzle dressed up as thunderstorms. Lovers amok on neglected lives. Cobwebs forming in the dormant corners.

The darkness there more than ample to disguise even something so near.

They were all worried about the paint job. What with the drunk girl wandering around. We were lobbying for frailty, but truth won out. In the subtle hiccups it usually effects. When it's disappointed.

If you ask me I'll swear I've never been loved. Not in that way. Who would ask anyway. But if they did, I'd point them to the candy wrappers I call walls. The lack of teeth marks in them.

They bit. But never swallowed.

There were moments I thought I knew everything. In the slow hum of failure it all seemed true. In the deep laugh of life undone they scratched.

So many lovers unwrapped.

What if they took away the places you'd always walked. Replaced them with reminders of how often you'd fallen.

What if my pants weren't always too long. And I could run in them. Without my shoes on.

What if I wore a dress. And tried to ignore that sense of rape that overtakes when I walk out into the world lost inside it

What if I had said no to him. Spread my legs wide enough to show how empty I was with him inside.

What if I had worn those heels. Made myself tall enough to find his tongue. Sparse salvation the only kind there might've been.

What if I had just said yes. One more time. Let the dagger linger a little longer. Might we still be trying. To save each other.

What if I wore that dress. Let the rape take over. What if I knew why it's anything but random.

The holes in me I let you dissect.

He was ready with a kiss. Surgical as it was. We had rented a slum in happiness. We had chosen the fire escape. With little incident.

Haven't I catalogued that dream? Woken up from it so many times. With fingers still in place. The woof of the floor as it barks out our pace. In a stark rendition of where we've walked.

In cold outlines that pull the labels from these crayons. The nameless colors of the intimate. If we can be so generous as to call it that. Close enough. To know how far.

Turned against myself. By your game of Othello. Convinced that I had done something wrong.

Dented fingernails in a cyclone of sheets. I remember when the rain never lasted this long. When there was no way to measure so much surrender.

When we'd have sex. Kneading skin like clay. Into shapes it would never keep. With fingers too nervous to turn over. And catch the rain. Collecting the afterwards in sober fragments. Children draped in mother's clothes.

Life's buxom dominoes teetering

With so many words at my disposal I was never able to say. Anything at all. With so many people to love it still wouldn't happen.

I should have lied. Let the rain fall a little harder.

I should have noted the colors. Knowing I'd never see them again.

I should have said so much. But it had never rained so long. And I'd never been so close to seeing where it came from.

He told me I should find someone else to love. And I believed him.

If a raindrop isn't small enough to catch. There's always the option to let it fall.

We were thankful. Thankful as thieves who'd gotten away with something.

We were children. We were suspects. Of crimes we couldn't name. In broken bits of life the songs would try to play. Touching the dirt with all five fingers. Betting with the moon on when or if ever the sun would show itself.

In the creases. Too sure of themselves. In the people so certain. I'd never be lost from them. The sky turned purple. And beat out its rhythmn. With a million tiny hands.

And I was thankful that I could hear it.

I was finished being anyone else's victim.

It was raining. It was so loud. Out there. And I was thankful. For all that was never ours.

I was thankful for all the things we never had.

It was the night before tomorrow. It was slouching in the bruises in worn leather. Extrapolating memory from the scratches on the floor. Looking down. And across. For scars. Of any sort. The secret photographs the room had taken of when.

Scribbling in the silence. Like it was looking at itself from the other side of the lens. Everything much smaller than it really was. Failing outlines seeking a center.

The night before. Amok in love's daunting puberty.

The night after. Stunned and grizzled like like so many broken veins still attached to their needles.

High enough to see it down there. That spectrum of a person who names her colors arbitrarily. By the knots in her hair. Still left over. By the spit on her lips that still carries the taste. Of the night before tomorrow. Of the life before and after this.

Everything was upstairs. Trapped in a numb crossroads. I waited for change. I waited for repetitions. Neither came.

Everything was upstairs. In the room where the light never came on. The paper doll culled from my skin. The sharp edges she dared him with.

The window. The imagery of headlights gazing upon. The ceiling. The walls. Too ready to receive the light from outside.

Everything was soft in the puddles left behind by the rain that finally relented in trying to drown whatever we were. Everything was hard in the wrinkles that made my bed. As I laid one morning later. Trying to prove the photographs were true.

Everything was upstairs. Everything is just where we've left it. In diminished templates. That I wish still fit.

When there was nothing. As arrogant as it was then. I understood my place. My needless nowhere. The careless permutations of loneliness as they shuddered through the shallow areas that speckled the deep end. In the delicate way all things untaken know themselves. Are not spoiled by expectation.

Crass understudies pacing behind the curtain of tragedy. So eager for any kind of applause.

When there was grief there was a way to validate this deliberate suffocation. Qualify the vice by the virtue of its vendetta. Stealing the words in synonyms of all the treasons come before.

There was nothing. And we were loyal to each other. For so long.

Own the shadows. Name them each. Instead of how it is now. Stagnant farewells unfinished. Owned by them.

When there was nothing the lies were ample device. To measure the quake. The frail incubations of the love. That make premature hearts old enough. To know the length of the string. The hiss of the wind. Asking us to let it go.

There was nothing. There always was.

He turned the windows off. In cold rampages. In burgundies that never matched. He counted that threads that were bare. In the seams of his epiphany. Like a child counts the number of ropes she's skipped. Idle warts on loose skin. Sick with all the remedies we apply.

I killed the loneliness tallying the reds. Carving the treasons to measure the least of the ingredients. I killed the hollow the way all crimes are executed. At the expense of someone else.

He fought the walls so discretely I almost thought I was imagining the war. He used those shadows through the glass. Monster in blue eyeliner assembling my proof.

Of the girl I almost became.

Little strangers. Their toes making polka dots in the darkness. Little moments arriving at last. So much bigger than I pictured them.

I never really knew myself until someone different took her place.We sat talking and watching star trek dvds while I waited for myself to return. We baked cookies and ate them waiting for my life to srhug off its costume and resume its normal state. We moved everything around. In a dank shuffle of didn't change a thing. Keeping the music low. So we'd hear her when she finally came home.

I never wanted to be myself until I wasn't her.

We played. Loved them. Like we wished they'd loved us. While we waited for her to come back. For anyone to notice that she was gone.

I never really knew her. Not like I thought I did. That little girl stuffing her heart with rage to stifle the emptiness. She'd always seemed a burden.

Until.

She left me more myself than I ever wanted to be.

He put the carpet under the bed. Forty dollars to hide the floor that was already hidden. His footsteps always made him sound larger than he was. He was one goosebump all alone amongst a great length of skin. The only one brave enough to admit how cold it was.

His pace implied an urgency that wasn't there. I'd run around him in my head. In the tortured marathons of a friend who wanted love. Chasing words that can't be caught. Killing moments that are never really dead.

We were only names to each other. For as much dirt as that could displace. For as little face as we could afford to see when our eyes opened too soon after the drowning. The little chambers in our lives where we keep the chapters we're not ready to read spreading their legs.

Anticipating.

Penetration.

There was ceiling everywhere. Goading, sure. Panting like a stamen about to burst. And steal the nose off of the clown's face. There in the big sign that had been watching over us while we filmed the ride from every angle. The words waited to be written. Judases desperate for a branch. Strong enough to weigh the guilt.

We never said goodbye. We just let it say us.

I took the long way down the stairs. Outlining the toes of the labor. I tasted the darkness before every bite. Imaging the poison my prisoner.

I bit every nail down to nothing. Averaging the decimals in leaps. I was the chikcen who crossed the raod. To get to the other side. I was the punch line. To so many jokes.

Still am.

We could dance if we wanted it. We could beat those ceilings.

If we had to.

The anchor on the porch was dressed in red when we pulled up more than willing to drop it. Inbetween orgasms I'd label each wrinkle in his pants. While they lay on the carpet looking so lost. There are categories for everything. I'd tell myself. Even this.

There are eyes that listen. Ears that speak. The trench forms below the swing as frantic feet continue to kick the dirt away. Until the ground doesn't remember anywhere we've been.

The night undressed itself down to the panty hose. Perfect legs still poised to receive the scavenge. Hunters in smooth tuxedoes weighing their bow ties against my failings. Weak enough to still want what what I've never had.

So, he said, What of the metaphors you had for me last night? Where are your buckets now? How many of those holes are mine? Do you talk like you write? Or do you write like you talk? Where does the poetry stop and you begin?

It's not like I know what I'm saying. When the words spill through the needle. It's just a tiny prick and then what needs out gets it. And whatever wants in has an entrance.

It's not like we were anything other than one disaster after another. It's not the chaos that's bad. It's after. Trying to clean it up.

I said, maybe, someday. When we're used to being this sober.

Pale camouflage he chose. In stubborn fits of loyalty. While she watched. Swollen with the choice.

Frail lies. She wore. The sequin dresses her thighs would scream. As she strutted through their lives in echoes. Whatever was real about her only trying to remember.

Loose denim not befriending love's requests. The cacophony of verse festering. Maggots on dead files. Labeling the corpse. In phases. In the absence of ample lies. Better friends.

The ash in the corner too close to knowing. The rainbow spent. On all those colors that never come true.

There are steaks in the fridge. Cold enough to eat. Red enough to keep up with the hunger. A needle in the pillow. Still waiting to be be closed. Sleep covered in fingerprints. From victims naming their prisons. Like the children they never had.

There was such certainty in the loss. I couldn't resist. The privilege of weakness.

We moved like children tangled in swings. Struggling to find a rhythm in the chaos. We turned the gift wrap inside out. And waited.

For the walls to talk. The way they always did just before all the doors went deaf.

Willing the wrinkles undone. And the ribbons to wake up. In love with the empty we'd been given.

Time had gone backward for so long. How could've I been prepared for its decision to move ahead.

There was so much promise in the lies.

Of course I believed it.

As impossible as it was.

There was so much to taste in that one moment of clarity. I'll never know which was the real thing.

This stiff oasis.
Turning us sober.

While we try
to reach,

Something not
ours. Soft victims
In red cocoons.

That refuse to
change us.

No deserts strong
enough, to prove this
thirst.

Turn these stems
to leaves.

Put to bed
those rabid dreams.

I was counting.
The minutes.

I was waiting.

For permission
to live again.

Flirting with the
corner of the paper.

Cold attacks in
warm fingerprints.

More than proof enough.

Of anything I thought
I wanted.

There was nothing to share. Plenty to sacrifice. He pulled up in a honda. Older than me. It's easy to know who you will love. The trick is knowing who will love you.

The tepid touch of favor. In skin that doesn't recognize. The faces you've collected. All those nights. Sneaking back into it. Pennies on the sidewalk. Meaning nothing to the pockets they fell through.

The rhythmn of selection suiting only itself. As I shuffle through the discards in my pile. Temperate and willing to accept. Everything I am not.

To them.

It's a long walk to sleep. Caught in the amber of streetlights. Borken fingernails picking at the mountain. In a process not unlike life. Just a little hole. To create a bigger one.

Just the sidewalk. Repeating my progress back to me. In a code I can't decipher. While the rain traces my shadow. As it lurks behind me. Constantly threatening to overtake

I closed the door behind us. I don't know why. Because there was no one else there.

We were looking both ways. But it came from a different direction. We were busy like hound dogs with the scent.

Until it found us. Like children caught in a nightmare. Awoken in a puddle of our own piss.

There was music in the background. As I asked him. What he'd heard.

There was music. The soft drizzle of disappointment finding the holes we never knew were there.

Until then.

It was yellow. Like my grandmother's kitchen. When we were young. And she'd make us hot dogs. In an aluminum pot. Toasting the store brand buns under the broiler. We'd sit at the long table in chairs too tall for us and look out through the glass at the top. Of the rusted, dented white storm door. As it wheezed against the tug of summer. Breathing like an old woman. Sleeping in a bed she no longer shared with anyone.

We could taste the the potato cylinders as they were baking. The smack of trans-fats simmering in our nostrils as they expanded through the weighted air.

My brother's toes scraping the linoleum as his legs kicked. Anticipating the privilege of happiness.

Our words spilling from Hi-C stained lips. As we sorted out our dwindling rivalries. It was yellow. Where we ate together. Where she fed us. Food not on our plates. The certainty of childhood. The absolute in every moment. That more would come. Just like it. The happiness of tater tots.

It was yellow then. The luxury of happiness. The arrogance of children. As they chafed against time's heavy linens.

It was yellow then because that was how she made it.

And it's yellow now. Because that is the color it always was.

We sat at the bar. Red wine and Bass Ale flirting in our glances. We watched the football game neither of us were interested in. Because there was no place on any wall to look where it wasn't.

Pieces of other peoples' conversations breaching our gazes. While we dug deeper for a listening that had been buried too long. The world inside those walls writing our relationship in spatters on dirty cocktails napkins. And the change from too many twenties left under bloated ashtrays.

That was back before every pleasure wasn't a burden. And strangers could congregate in preludes to sex. Teasing their prey with second hand smoke and the vacant motels November imposes upon small town lovers. Smaller hearts. We could suspend our loneliness in the viscosity of the labor. Intimacy ground down to its barest hub. Body and mind intrinsically committed to the preservation of numbness. In any and every form. Parallel parking the flesh to flesh. On busy streets. Where the traffic behind builds quickly. And there is no time to pause. To learn who this stranger we're saving is.

We pulled to a stop. At the wharf.

And watched the boats. Going nowhere.

Sails too hungry to ever be quenched by a single wind.

I posed him. He posed me. Toothpicks at every joint. The morning in our throats as the night filled our skin. There'd be time enough to grieve after.

I counted the footsteps from lamp to door. Drawing the exit in my memory. By both length and width. Two dimensions more than enough to calculate how far.

I filled in the spaces. According to the flow of the pauses. Reverse-engineering every word to fit the situation. There was no changing what had happened. Only manipulating how I would percevie it.

Counting the rotations. As the tires spun beneath us. Taking us there. And leading us away from.

The color of gravity fading softly into the murmurs of the dust. As it settled quietly on rusting railings just outside doors not marked.

But still showing clearly where the names had once been.

The angle of the kiss. So acute. The turmoul in the touch. So frantic.

Thrust. Tooo true. Broken specimen.

This was love. As much as I could. This was happiness.

As much as I'd ever know.

Of it.

So many. So few.

Were there a way to measure.

How close.

It was easier to write with paper. The breath of the pen fogging up the mirror. The howl of the paper. Echoes of empty placing their wagers.

It was harder to write on paper. So true. The choke of forever in every stroke.

She had gone to bed. With the tv on. As usual. And the closet open. Full of clothes she'd worn once, but never again. Potent eras arranged in the order of their significance. The persons she'd briefly been. More herself than she cared to remember. In the fade of denim. The scream of stitches stretched.

It's to be worn only once. And then discarded. Like so many things we want. Stalled at the moment it's most alive.

It's to be written.

Arranged. More than remembered.

It was easy to trip over the sunshine. The blinds as open as they were. Like rouge toenails left to wallow in the fresh laminate. It's always habit. Until it's vice.

In the obstacle course from which we reference our affections there are only buttons. Coming undone. Hope's arthritic fingers struggling with that stiff spot near the collar.

Necks exposed to broken the zippers. That wear us when we're too young. To count. How many windows are required.

To see. What isn't there.

It was early. Too early to wake up. When the bed shook us out like so much dandruff.

I couldn't have been more ready to lose. Or more unprepared to win.

Whatever it was that might've been the prize.

We would lay there. Trumped by the limits of our endurance. Counting footsteps on the sidewalk outside. People walking away from. Curious enough to try. Someone else. A new lover. A new cage. Rearranging the prison to suit the confined.

He would sing sometimes. Stretching his voice to meet the song. He would play guitar with both eyes. Making love to a voice he hadn't seen in years.

We were never close enough that I couldn't see. How far.

We would lay there. Stiff nails in soft coffins. And wait.

Silently.

For the shovel to speak.

We would lay there. Tortioses unconcerned with the race. Just trying to move.

Pacing.

In the shadow of the hare. Red sheets without a wound.

We would wait. Not knowing where to listen.

We would wait.

For the hole to measure us.

A fist full of dirt in a heavy hand. Premature clay. Fiddling under long fingernails. Expecting rain. So much dogma in my dreams. I can't go to sleep without first making myself forget. Why sleep isn't an ally anymore. Can't tell the story until I've been told by it. At least a hundred times.

It's not life. It's just words. Waiting to happen.

It wasn't love. It wasn't sex. It was just pleasure working its faulty algorithms.

Life is static content. Memory is dynamic. A rabid doberman to guard the perimeter of every moment.

Until frailty finally relents. And that thin layer of denim which kept us apart is faded enough.

That we can see through it.

And I finally walk away. Content in the sound of the corduroy choking on my thighs.

One of my favorite blogs is RuKsaK. If you've never been there before, or even if you have, check him out. The way he manipulates words is both humbling and astonishing.

The last things I said to you, I don't really remember what they were. But now I don't know where you are. Where the candy house was bitten. Where the popcorn becomes a trail.

The last time I had an epiphany I was drunk. Stumbling to explain the colors hopelessness impales. Find some congruity I thought they had with what I was. Tripping on the edge of the rug as it anticipated our sweep.

Challenging the sheets to rediscover the pleasures I'd misplaced. In thumbnails bitten to close to the skin. It scratches. Like winter's wind on dead leaves.

Happiness has as many vices as sorrow.

You tell me I can and I will. Go to that extent. Plant the ace in my enemy's pocket.

To lose the this war. To save the cause of it.

Eyeing the mountain. Counting the rungs on the ladder that got me this high.

There was the low hum of a failing fluourescnet in his throat. The stale pink of a sky about to blizzard in our silence.

I ordered the chinese for delivery. And then we waited. Paralyzed at the stopllight we had created. Swallowing those strangers in starving gulps. Their cotton candy personas melting predictably into our tongues.

Just sweet enough to ignore the thirst.

As we thumbed through the patterns for a suitable foe. Soliciting a pergatory that could never be as perfect as the ones we'd come from.

Maybe it wasn't the food. So much as the chopsticks. How they make every bite taste like wood.

His calamity would come in bursts. Pale, strategic coughs. While he waited for my sympathy. In doses. Not so strong as to cure. Only to sustain him in his sickness.

There's nothing like being a woman. Stranded in the run of old panty hose. Crippled by bras that hook at the rear. Wishing for rubber arms and marble legs. I'm an image. A faulty perfection chiseled from the mountain of my flaws.

Swollen shut against the receipt of pleasure until my contribution to his has been verified. By the burp of ecstasy.

He'd look at the walls. The shapes I'd drawn upon them. In moments stalled. Crude photographs of the heart. Developing in colored pencil stabs.

I'd listen like a trap set. String tied to a stick propping up a box. I'd listen. Like I hadn't already been caught.

When I was a little girl I'd refer to myself as a writer. Because of this my older brother once challenged me to write a story.

So it was on.

I started with a castle. Quickly added in the requisite princess. Then I stopped.

I didn't want to write about those things. But with fairy tales being my only life experience to draw on, I was stymied for plot. For characters. For the substance I inherently wanted.

It's a true story.

And to this day I still struggle to reconcile the limits of what I've experienced in life with the vastness that writing demands of its disciples.

I hear the doorbell chime. In asthmatic gasps. And hurry my way down the stairs. But by the time I get there.

It's gone.

Sometimes I go back into the archives. To find the alcoholic poet I was then. To realize I'm still an alcoholic. Just not a poet anymore.

And if I go back further. To before the blog. I wasn't an alcoholic at all. But I was a poet. At least to some small degree.

And further back.

Neither poet. Nor alcoholic. But well equipped with ample vices.

To become either one.

He painted in brown. He painted in grey. Such fortunate brushstrokes they were to be his. He'll always be better than me. He'll always be first. I'll always be second.

Always.


He took the candy. And ate the wrappers too. Tiny chocolate footprint making a path from his fingers to his lips. He didn't notice me looking. As he counted his errors.

He didn't notice.

Because he din't have to.

We left the words for later. While the act pooled in our extremities. Nervous fingers in their rheumatoid perdition. A broken violin clutching the last note of someone else's symphony.

We drew the outlines in chalk. Traced the bodies. Detectives with stone eyes. Holding down pages still not written. Novels without words. Mumbling into the ears of half-hearted lovers.

It's like we've always been dead. And it only took a glimpse of life to know.

All the words we've left for later.

That won't be heard.

I watching tv. Arguing with sobriety. Like I often do. I was telling myself I'd done all I could do. Trying to mean it.

The ugly in the moment always find the hole in those old containers I use to hold them. The window always looks different when I'm backing up. A mirror image of where I'm going.

He was high enough that he told me the truth. Afterthoughts sometimes come before. All that waiting. Only to never know. Who he is when no one's there.

The last sips always ended confessions with dial tones. Right then.

I knew everything about myself.

Except.

What to want.

At the front door. We dallied. With the charms of soft footsteps assigning cause to coincidence. The hug of the door comforting as the moment pressed me into its arms. The tiny moon just over my shoulder tracing his lips. Like paper on the window becomes a portrait of whatever's out there.

At the front door. With the clouds like lipstick on the moon. The wind swelling to taste her every breath. While the small sun upon his shoulder scribbled its questions on my brow.

At the front door. Where we'd left together. A million choices ago.

I went back and removed all the i's. Added some you's. For the sake of depreciation. Time being so hard on old friends. Fair market value being cynical at best. There's only one proper way to fill a glass. Tilt it. Let the liquid flow down the sides. So that it has a chance to get to know what stranger is about to fill its hole.

It's not writing. This ritual I do. It's fever. It's the thermostat. It's the pins and needles in dying skin.

It's not art that sweeps me into this position. Curled over the keyboard. Knee to chin. It's vice. Every word lets loose another bite of stale salvation.

Every sentence makes me a child again. Unsure. Unaware of what I want. And what I have. Stiff petals on the floor fold the little light into names I can't recall. As every sip drinks a new scab.

The balloon smiles briefly just before the pin penetrates. But it laughs as it bursts. And everything not inside finally reveals itself.

The ribbons were long and pink. On the tiny boxes. Even though they had my name on them, they didn't seem to belong to me. The sleepwalk that is life becoming apparent. As I examined his signature in the card. Words to say what life would not permit. Children sleeping in their parents' clothes.

There was every night to waste thinking about what liars have to trust. The pancakes spilled from the carton in a timid stream. The eggs waited warmly. While he laid out the dishes and set the orange juice on the table.

The smell of syrup antiseptic on my tongue. The cackle of the water as it threatened coffee. It was almost as though we were real. And not just the night before reminding us we were the prey.

You don't have to be broken to recognize when someone else is. But if you are. It's that much easier to to know when it's time to let them fall apart.