the stars have voices, too.

i am scared i did not give it enough;  never picked it up and ran with it into the street,  screaming, joyous, screaming, i was never sit-on-the-roof-talking young, never tip-the-bottle-skyward young, never unlatch-the-window, let-the-boy-in, drive-across-the-state-border-and-back-in-one-night young.

that is the never-young in which i cared too much.  but then there is the other, newer, steel-hard:

the youth that lingers on me, overripe, trash in the street in new york summer, sweet and sickly— youth gone to rot, gone to waste. look, i tell myself, look what the others are doing,  taking great sweeping steps and great savage bites,  they gleam with their youth.

they are planting new trees and feasting, and you, you drifted.  dropped.  withered at the rind.

that is the second never-youth, the one in which i did not care enough.

i can’t sleep in the middle of the bed— no, not can’t, just won’t, i am always curled in on one side, on myself, wolf cub huddled, hiding from a cruel, preying city  that is always cold as winter, waiting for someone to fill the space, bring warmth, but  they don’t.

i can’t stop thinking about my father telling me he worries (of course he always worries,  but this is different, deeper, ocean-floor fear): he says he worries he and mama tore me in two,  blocked the sun, turned me into  something growing crooked, cold, afraid,  something broken—

but what if I was never whole 

I want to leave, except when I don’t. Sometimes the light blooms purple and grey over the tops of buildings, so soft I want to fall in, and something in my chest collapses inward and I think, oh, that, oh, you.

I want to leave. Chart a new course. But here I am already a map: People ask, where’s that jazz bar, where’s a good place to eat, and I know. I know. And this city may not be good to me but she knows me, at least. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?

I want to leave. I think I do. I’m just not sure I know how.

She is trying so hard and I want to weep and kiss her for it, but I don’t know how to tell her that it isn’t sometimes, it’s all the time. I feel the sky falling, shards breaking over my head, all the time. I feel the walls turning grey, closing in, all the time. I don’t know how to tell the truth and not break her heart.

but my mama knew, the way they do— she turned and saw and dove missile fully clothed i still remember her dress, sopping shade of wild rose

sixteen swimming seasons later i still feel it the water never stops coming for me my mama says i should talk to someone spit out the dark before i choke and i feel salty fingers at my throat

i think i read somewhere that the fields near Maracay are in good part sugarcane— it must have seeped into your blood along the way

you smile and it is the brown sugar cube i used to steal from my mother’s coffee you ask me to dance and i swear i taste honey

so sweet it hurts my teeth— i’m sorry i wish i still had that craving, i want to give you what you want but i look at you and see the kind of thing i used to eat the kind of thing that, once i got it,

slowly ate away at me

morning is broken, i am  holding the pink and blues together with my eyelids. your palm  and fingers reach me through ether thumb brushing woodland path  from jaw to lip and back.

i do not bloom or bend  or change.  i do none of the things  they say are done to us by touch.

i breathe.  this is only real in the grey (until we leave this bed,  until we don’t speak of this)

i want to ask you, why? were you fumbling  in half sleep? i want to ask

my father likes to tell a story  from his military school days:  something about a dozen guns  atop outstretched arms  and the hot, hot sun. 

this is not a proud story. it is not a story full of moxie, or spunk,  or the next new chin-buck-up.  because after half an hour  in the hot, hot sun and his hot, hot uniform,  my father swoons to the concrete  all the softness they tried to muscle out of him.

my father laughs when he tells this story. it ends in slapstick, icy water and relief bucketed across his face, a gruff pat on the back.

i am trying not to be soft.  i am fighting to keep my eyes open until the story ends.  i am not my father, but i am tired.

our hearts are hoarse with the same honey-fire and we’re certain no one can hear the screaming  under all the skin and skeleton.