I wanted to hate
fuck you in the back of my car
parked in the parking lot at work,
make the windows fog with my filthy
mouth as I demand that you rip me
apart, your teeth on my neck
nails tearing at your body,
grab me by the back of my head
and screw me till my anger
is audible beyond the glass.
I wanted to give
the security cameras
something worth catching:
you, punishing me for my
insubordination.
Sometime after midnight
I woke with my hand curled
into a fist resting against
your arm, caught in the sleepy
glow of the streetlight shining
through your bedroom window
and could not help but stare
at the art beneath your skin,
as beautiful and shadowy
as an e-minor chord.
Your lips are parted and dry
from our kissing; they channel
your breath as you sleep.
Only hours before, I held
them between my teeth
gently as one holds
a child in their arms.
I catch sight of your belly
button – a sure sign of your
mortality – reminding me
that you are not a dream
or a God or permanent.
You are just a man
and I am just a woman.
We are just a man
and a woman leaving
invisible teeth marks
on one anothers lips;
we are just a man
and a woman lying
naked together.
We are just a man
and a woman, almost
as temporary separate
as we are together.
It is dark on the evening of the 24th
save for the yellow glowing of the tree
in the corner. The night is silent and holy
and we are calm, quietly stretched across
the couch like two layers of the same cake.
The church across the street is empty.
You find the store on the corner closed.
No cars and no people and no room at the inn.
You and I cannot figure out what the rest
of the world is so busy doing.
Bare skinned against each other, I have traced
the contours of your back with my fingertips
enough times to have your body’s map memorized;
I ask, but you can’t recall where the scar
on your left shoulder came from.
Last year, this time, it was snowing;
Here you interrupt me with a kiss;
you have taken my lips between yours
enough times to speak for me
for years.
You say against my cheek that it’s late -
we should go to bed; I follow you
to the bedroom recalling every December 24th
that came before, and settle into my side
of your bed between you and my ability
to keep myself from crazy,
knowing I was officially grown.
1,
In my defense, it was my first time
trying tequila; if I hadn’t been sloshing
Jose, I’d have laughed at your lofted bed
and suggested you fuck YOURSELF instead.
2,
You left me crazy, commiserating
with the magic marker’s ink you sweated
off onto my bed sheets and collecting
the clothes you left on my floor.
3,
I spent the whole time hoping
you weren’t looking at my naked
body, awkward on top of yours.
You must have been.
4,
We were home alone, sprawled
across my couch and your tongue
between my legs kept me awake
all night; we never finished the movie.
5,
You called me beautiful, kissed
the word into my mouth and, at two AM
trekked, fully erect, across campus
to your car for a condom.
6,
You used your fingers and played
my body like you played your guitar;
I shook like its strings.
I rang like your chords.
7,
I should have known
by the silk sheets on your king
sized, vibrating bed.
Unfortunately…
8,
Beneath that cool mountain waterfall,
your paper cranes had nothing
on the way my body folded
against and into yours.
9,
The bad decisions I made
with you are ones that still haunt
me when I wake up and realize
I hurt him by pleasing you.
10,
The Sarasota summertime wasn’t
enough to keep us separate; there were
too many hurricanes in which to swim,
too many bruises to leave.
11,
I used your body to pacify
mine when it had been rejected
one too many times, left
to the hurt of loneliness.
12,
We never were what you wish
I’d wanted to be, and you’ll never
be worth wanting; you were
just something to do.
13,
Real men don’t need to hold
women down on the bed
and force their pants down,
like you did to me.
14,
I’m sorry I left you at the bar,
with the full tab, to walk home.
I realized too late that you
were not him.
15,
We have only just begun
and I am anxious to be destroyed
by you.
At four AM I wake to the low grumbling
of a street sweeper cleaning Castle
Street’s cracked pavement. The window
sparkles moisture – early morning condensing
against glass. The sweeper continues onward,
it’s roaring dulls as it crawls through
the neighborhood. Somewhere, an ambulance cries.
I roll away from it; I find you, waking
from some dream I’ll never understand.
You re-wrap me in your arm, cover
my bare shoulders with the blanket and drift
back to sleep. At the foot of the bed,
your giant maine coon stretches.
I am still and quiet against you, oddly
aware of my breathing and how the rising
and falling, rising and falling, of my chest
must feel against the arm draped across me.
Outside, the ambulance and the sweeper
have not stopped. The clock has not rested.
The world is still whirling by
and we are here, lying alone
together in slow motion
waiting for morning.
Tonight I will litter your yard with my cigarette butts.
You’ll see them in the morning and recognize
them by their pink lipsticked filters that once matched
the smudged traces of my lips on your shoulder
and you’ll wish to yourself
that you’d said what you’ve known to be true
to me while I was still there
inhaling and exhaling in time with you
beneath the blanket of your body
instead of inhaling and exhaling
my disregard for you
on your back porch
and continuing to apply
and reapply my pink lipstick
onto the shoulders of another man.
We start off small,
as if no where on the earth is lightning striking.
Closed lipped and petrified,
we pick up speed,
falling into the rhythm of the familiar
inevitable.
All of the days between
the last time and now
catch up to me and I have no choice
but to kiss you again.
And we are still gathering strength.
We go on, creating lightning
where there was none.
There is nothing to do
but gain momentum.
I have been hurled like a rocket
into outer space,
my outer space enveloped by yours -
sealed by your tongue,
tongue-tied and tangled
in your hands.
And still we kiss -
open mouthed
and petrified -
finding that we are the only ones
the lightning has struck.
Maybe I should be
the type that spends
countless hours in a dimly lit
coffee shop corner
looping my L’s
and stretching my Y’s
in description of the
Osprey’s glide or
the angry Atlantic
but I am not that poet.
I am the type
that writes what creates
in me flammability
like catching you staring,
heating my skin from across the room
in a matter of miliseconds
or
the words you place as carefully
as mines in a field, sending currents
of lust like electricity through my limbs
making me eager to be destroyed by you.
Yes
these things fill my white space,
more striking than the soaring Osprey
raging wilder than the Atlantic,
until neither it nor me are as
innocent as we once were.
This evening I stood naked in front of the mirror
and let my hair fall long down my back and shoulders
and watched as it curled and tangled and caught light
before taking the scissors and beginning to cut
away the Tallulah Gorge and the island where we spent
fourth of July. I cut away your med school applications -
the ones that filled my inbox, waiting for revision -
and watched them tumble softly to the ground
by my bare feet. I cut away your peanut allergy
and your freckles and your instant sunburn
and the way you shake your hair out of your face
that always reminded me of the first night we spent
together. I cut out the North end and the sunrise
and our marina. I cut out Cold Mountain
and the white tank top I’d worn that evening
and the moon that you showed me from the road
in front of my house. I cut out your sleep talk
and your scorching hot shower and your half
rolled t-shirt sleeves. I cut out Bookstacks
and the swing in your parents back yard.
I cut our names from where you carved
them on the side of the mountain in Georgia.
I cut out each fort – even the one from upstairs,
where your Mom found us early one morning
and saved you from your Dad’s scolding.
I found our pictures and your notes
and both paper cranes in a knot at the back
and I cut them away, too. I cut them all
and they all gathered at my toes, dead
and severed and hopeless.
I ran my fingers through what was left,
tested its new lightness, its movement,
and found that I, still standing naked
in front of the mirror, with the past
collected in small piles on the floor,
did not recognize myself.
You burn like liquor
and breathe like cigarettes
and examine this thing
in my chest.
You touch in the middle
of the night, your crawling
fingers on my hip,
begging me to wake
and let you taste me
with your hungry,
wet tongue.
And there I cling,
like a spider
on silky web,
to your shoulders.
And there we lay,
our inner spaces
reflecting the outer
space which waits,
sparkling, just beyond
your ceiling,
as you burn like liquor
and breathe like cigarettes
and turn this thing in my chest,
this crank that I have let rust.
