little

a revision

we are hazy things and in-between a sixth shot of vodka and dripping off your chin are words too heavy to speak. so, you swallow them down like a seventh shot of adrenaline. heart racing in time with my fist on the door of our eighth story apartment because I forgot the key again and we're both hazy under too many lights. I miss this and your words and your mouth slurring them. almost too hard to tell when I end and when you begin to fade away. hazy nights and your thighs-- too far from sober to tremble right; too long tipsy to feel fine, and like you're hazy and frayed at the edges and my fingers fumble to patch us back up with a ninth shot at us making it.

it starts low and dull on a friday morning when the sun's not yet past the horizon. i think to myself that i will spend forever between the dusk and sunrise if it meant today didn't have to really start. i could suspend myself in the moment without ever meeting them. the sun rises, and i meet them, tucked under the tree branches between a breath and an "i'm sorry", and the coffee hasn't yet hit my veins but my blood is pounding anyway. i want them to be my sunrise. i don't tell them that, even after dancing half-clothed in their father's house, hair messed up and lips stretched wide. i don't tell them after playing hide and seek with my nephew and finding them wedged between a rock and my left lung. i don't tell them. i don't tell them until they do, lips pressed the bones over my heart. they tell me that coffee tastes like the seconds before the sun hits the horizon, that dancing feet sound like pouring rain in the summer, that playing hide and seek between my ribs isn't a game anymore. they tell me it's a home, family game night and fireworks, welcome mat wet with july showers. they say 'sunsets aren't the same without you' i say 'we are a sunrise'

it's glimpses of sun from the driver's side window. it's rolled down just enough to let the smoke settle along the roadside and make a home with the gravel and dust. it's wide-mouth words yelling along to old pop songs and did you ever hear about the first time i met so-and-so? it's all music now. it's the quiet right before sunrise, birds still sleeping like you should be. but it's six am and the dull light only lets me see the tired in your eyes. it's bone-deep somehow. crushing. it's wind on the water and a cackle from the back of the boat, sunglasses barely hiding the hangover. the sun isnt very forgiving, most days. it's too much all at once, between one blink and the next. i could hold up a mirror but that would ruin what it is. something unabashed and aloof, can't catch it because it's not meant to be held. but you do.

sometimes i want to whisper baby into your skin like it's more than a promise but truth is it's not even a promise it's just me trying to bury some part of myself in you so when we walk away from each other you won't forget the knowledge you left with like the sound a car makes outside my bedroom window at 5am when you're sneaking out or the creaky fifth step going down to the sidewalk or the lady across the hall with her too-loud tv blaring through our walls or the gaping silence between one sound and the next and i want to yell because maybe i wasn't the only one to call you baby and maybe the bruise i saw on the inside of your arm, fading and yellow, wasn't one i put there with my own teeth i miss you and the noise you made when i asked you to stay the next morning and the morning after that when i begged you to think twice about what we were what are we solid glass and two sheets between us again and one word away from being the end of a story the punchline to a joke that started with a fist through the cracked drywall like starting a show in the middle of a season to find out all the secrets are already out in the open or the blanket crumpled around your legs or leaving the bathroom light on so you can see to tiptoe out before the sun comes up is it losing you if i pushed you away in the first place

dear sue, i think it's come time to write again. you drink every night like the whiskey and wine will make the ache in your bones any less. i fill my days now so i'll never have time to pay attention to the three-day-old mcdonald's sitting on the kitchen counter or the buzzing next to my ear and i know you're calling but my hands still don't want to answer. you're getting closer to two full bottles a night and oh but do you understand what it means to know you're on your way to maybe-alcoholism? and i'm scared that the grass won't ever be any greener. while i'm tanning on the beach of a creek i knew when i was kid you're penning poetry about a dream that's a lifetime old and still your lifetime goal. me writing free verse words with no structure and doesn't that just resemble my life completely? a washed-up dream of something too complicated to finish. the ozarks are magical this time of year. sometimes i think faeries are in the trees telling me to stay here a while. i might listen. i'm worried you won't tell me when the nights start getting too long and i'm scared the alcohol won't cut it anymore. i miss you. dear sue, how do i fit this onto a postcard?

 feel like hold your breath its almost here can catch it in the air on the tips of your fingers skin burned hot in the sunset almost here feel like too much too far away antsy and three cigarettes since you pulled in the driveway two hours ago feel like holding stars over conversations fingers white-knuckling the steering wheel headed for dusk feel like hardwood floors and back to the door cant hold it anymore releasing breath feel like today is just one more heart (too) set on something () different

four years old and the wood panelling looks like something you'll remember when you're nineteen but right now it's nineteen ninety-nine and mtv is playing top twenty countdown to four years old and you can hear BSB harmonizing lyrics bouncing across wood panelling something you'll remember when you're two months away from twenty first experience with music is a boy band telling you get yourself a bad boy and you wanted to be good so bad still want to when you're not a child anymore not just four and memorising lyrics to a song that you shouldn't be hearing when you're faking adult life living in your parents' house still the wood panelling gone but the constant loop of a boy band in your head does it ever drive you crazy

you remember the first time you ever held a girl's hand you swiped your thumb over the back side of her palm soft and you're in love but not with her only with the way your souls connect and the sound of stars falling from her lips you remember the first time you ever kissed a girl when it wasn't for fun or for the amusement of the three boys on the other couch when there were galaxies beneath her tongue and not the sting of tequila you remember the first time you ever loved a girl when you could feel the spaces between you like mile markers before the next exit take you home but your home was right behind her ribs soft heart beating like the sound of stars falling the words forming like a galaxy under your tongue you remember the first time she broke your heart and when she does it again you let her because you can still taste the lightyears it took to get to this place nestled under your fingernails where you tried to claw your way out of her smile her smile like the curve of planets gravity always pulls you back

things that make sense: taking a breath only takes a second; the moments before release can be a lifetime. watching the sky change from blue to black aches hard under my ribs. broken bottles don't scare me any more than fists clenched too tight or words left unsaid. making sense is me holding two fingers around your wrist to prove you're still here. things that make sense: loss is hard when you can't really lose something.

like hollow bones an aching brought deep and the way your lips move when you say it's okay when all i want is to be the words your tongue wraps around when you say come here you speak and your stories sound like i'm the only one meant to hear them every syllable so special leaving your mouth so vivid sometimes i can reach out and touch them holding this because all i have is the echo of your arms the lightest touch when you are not here a promise we both know is too hollow

she's got a ridiculous sleepy look in her eyes, lips bitten puffy and holding onto the shirt around her torso and i want to kiss the tired out of her bones and maybe sleep in the dip between her shoulderblades there are bruises bitten purple down her spine teethmarks like cheetah spots telling a story it's just-woke-up speech, slurred, saying hold on and i grip her hips because i've never been able to say no and it's 7 a.m. coffee breath telling me don't go and ruffled hair spread across the sheets it's 2 a.m. and vodka begging please, and fingerprints where her hip meets her waist she wants rough and i want pliant and we are unforgiving i want to build homes inside her

it's like housing a low-grade nuclear reactor in my ribs ready to help my bones vibrate right out my body like this constant steady skin-buzz is the result of an energy leak too powerful did you know my thoughts sometimes feel like birds like muddled formations of newborn wings trying to fly like just the right amount of sleep would have me falling down or something like flying south for a long nuclear winter some miles before i reach comfort momma always said she said, close your eyes and be still and try not to concentrate on the steady butterfly-flutter of your eyelids the nervous movement of your veins under blankets thick with exhaustion and lately i've been feeling something like an upset synapse transfer like a system failure and a factory fire momma always said she said, be still but sometimes i feel like my mind is with birds nothing is as still as i am when i'm not my own anymore

and i've seen so many centuries, heard so many stories being spoken written with ink and scratched into walls night is always a time for tales to be told i've watched their hearts break and mend and i wonder what i'd have to do to fix mine because i see you now i say, nothing special you say, we are stars and suddenly i make sense i spend years trying to shine bright for them i'll be okay if i can only be the light in your eyes

did you know stars are so easy to see when they're reflected in your eyes that's the only time i ever see the sky tiny suns dance around you and god i love the look on your face when the moon is out it's like you're one of them reaching out and touching the galaxies overhead is a ritual you won't break you say these are your family and you are the sun they let go of and i only ever think why would they let you leave if you were so bright like the rose pink glow on your cheeks and the sparks that skitter on your skin were too dull to light up the night sky my fingertips want to touch the edges of the universe for answers you say, too bad you say, i've seen beyond this world you say, it's better in the dark

you meet with white walls surrounding you and water dripping 1-2-3 in the corner and his breath catches when you say your apologies look at those oceans in his nervous eyes your hand sweats before you curl your fingers around his and his hair falls against your shoulder with relief when you hear your names together you catch him like falling dreams he can't keep his eyes off you in the night before you tell him your secrets the comforter doesn't absorb the sounds like you want but it traps your tears so he won't see what he does to you you can't know you hold his heart when he tells you how big you make him feel the sounds of the bus are ticking away behind the curtain you want to trap yourself between his ribs where he's fit himself in yours he doesn't see the heart on your sleeve so you scratch one there with ink you can't breathe without him and the pressure on your chest isn't his body over yours can't take your eyes away from him singing your songs to someone else he sings his songs into your skin later and you let your arms fall open waiting for him was the easy part