post-storm petrichor

The day before you left us, I told him: “I think I saw the future last night” I told him I dreamed the room was blue I dreamed the room was blue, and the couch was too small, and there was a nail polish stain on the arm of his chair I dreamed there was starlight in the air I dreamed you were laughing like a child, and your eyes were the best kind of wild, and the tv light made you look like a solar flare, flashing off your teeth and catching in your hair, and we were both as lost in you as we always are, and it felt like being caught in the gravity of binary stars When I woke, I told him: “I have never wanted anything more” And when you left that night, he rendered what i said, and he tucked the hurt under his tongue like pills he couldn’t bear to swallow, and he spent the next month spitting it back at me whenever it started to choke him, and I spent the next month pretending I could survive the acid burns he was leaving me with, and you- You spent the next goddamn month talking to him like you couldn’t see what you’d done. The problem is, he always had crumbling pipe dreams clenched in one brass knuckled fist, kept it tucked safe in his pocket, away from your eyes like his ugliest habits, masked under a layer of denim and devil-may-care what you think but fuck everyone else- The problem is that I showed up. The problem is that I showed up, and you were caught in my orbit, comet instead of asteroid, and he wanted to hate me for having you, and he wanted to hate me for existing, he wanted to hate you for putting him last, and he wanted me, and later he wanted to hate you for that, too, the problem is the way he touched us in that arcade booth, the problem is a ten color pen and your lips on my neck and his hands on your hands on my chest- The problem is, we got careless. And now his lungs are collapsing alongside the ground he’s chasing to try to stay in your orbit, and I don’t know how much longer I can play ventilator. You’ve made speechless poets of us both, got us choking on our words and our hurt and each others tongues, like kissing hard enough can re-balance the galaxy without the fucking sun, like if we pretend we can’t taste the blood on our lips maybe it will never have been there, like we’re trying to survive on recycled air- Look. You’re gone and we’re crashing and I don’t tell him about the futures I dream anymore because every night, I am dropping our hearts from the top of a ferris wheel, they are shattering on impact, he is bleeding, he is looking at me with moonless eyes, he is shaking his head like someone gone sun blind, oh god, he is bleeding, he is saying our names, he is praying, he is laughing like tv static, he is still fucking bleeding- The day before you left us, I told him “I think I saw the future last night”, and it was the last time I saw stars in his eyes

An open letter to my “white privilege”, and the people who wish I would remember it: The Nazis are back. The Nazis are back, “never again” was an empty promise, and now, even more people are at the center of the chopping block. And the weird part is, I’m one of the lucky ones. My heritage doesn’t show in my face if you don’t know what to look for. I’m one of the lucky ones, all pale skin and green eyes and pin-straight white-girl hair. I’m one of the lucky ones, my ancestors got raped so many times by so many white men that I carry their abusers features alongside my Semitic genes. I’m one of the fucking lucky ones. There are so few spots in Europe I can walk without passing over the mass graves of my people. I can count the places I can safely visit on one hand. I cannot count the graves at all. Graves that were filled less than a century ago. Graves so often dug by the people who now rest in them. Mass graves, full of bodies that weren’t white enough, not until years after they’d already been burnt black. And I’m lucky. You’re right, I can hide better than someone with darker skin. You’re right, no one can see my race just by glancing at me. You’re right, and I’m by turns thankful for that and horrified by it because it just means someone else will hit the showers a little sooner. But let’s get something straight. I pass. I have white-passing privilege. My daddy is a white man, my mama is a kike, I’m mixed race, and I pass. That does not make me one of them.  They do not want my kind any more than you do. Pale skin was never enough to keep us from the slaughter, never enough to save Jewish babies from being used for target practice, never enough to stop pretty little Jewish girls from having their innocence stolen before they got their brains blown out, never enough to protect anyone from the camps. It will not be enough this time either. So, no, I am not white. Thank you for your fucking time.

My mother once told me that if the holocaust came again She would make her yellow stars of silk and velvet Wear them like an honor badge I didn’t understand then Not until the first time a man three times my age spat my jewishness back in my face like it was something vile, the word “kike” splattering into my face and over the gold gleam of the star at my throat alongside his bitter coffee Not until my best friend couldn’t see me anymore because her mother found out that under my pretty white face i’m just a dirty jew, a christ killer, not a real american, not a real person- Not until the temple two hours south of where i grew up was shot up by some skinny brat only barely older than me and my neighbor got angry with me for calling it a hate crime, don’t you know jews are white, don’t you know how good you have it here, the holocaust was a white genocide, never again, never again, this country took you in, the least you can do is assimilate, stop playing the victim- But we are being killed And I was born into this with targets printed on my dna For the love of god don’t tell me this shit is over Don’t tell me my culture is not being choked away I know you want to think anti-semitism died when Hitler shot himself But we still have to teach classrooms of ten year olds about the people who will want them dead for their bloodline So when the holocaust comes again, I will make my yellow stars from silk and velvet, I will wear them like an honor badge, I will stand arm in arm with my muslim family, my black family, my queer family, my never-gonna-fit-here family And I will hold their hands And I will fight by them when the devils come And if you ever try to take this star from around my neck I will use it to gouge your goddamn eyes out

Why do you keep giving her half-dead flowers? Why don’t you know how to leave her alone? I’m sorry, I think what I mean is that the roses are wilting and I still don’t have enough books to save them in.  I think what I mean is that my mouth tastes like molding petals and attic dust. I think what I mean is that your ghost moved out of the graveyard last week and the pipes in the ceiling above my bed have sprung a leak and correlation is not causation, but at the same time every time you speak I hear radio static and I wonder if the spiders that have taken up residence in my rafters will finally leave when you’ve gone. People keep asking me why I look so haunted as if they can’t see your shadow in my coffee cup, but just where did they think the ghosts would go when we replace their homes with strip malls anyway? I think what I mean is this: every time you bring me flowers you’re just adding more dead things to a haunted house and I’ve been trying to take them all in, but I’m already more ghost than girl, and I don’t think I have the room left in me for more. I’ve tried to hide them all in the attic with the other things I don’t like to think about, but they keep falling through cracks in the ceiling and tangling in my hair while I sleep.   I think they’ve been having late-night talks with the monsters under my bed.  I think they’re planning to eat me alive. I think the spiders in my rafters know your name too well. I think at half past midnight desiccated roses start to look like blood. I think you’re killing me. Last week, I caught my finger on a kitchen knife, and you said “be careful” and even though I laughed at you, that night you tried to crawl in bed with me like you’re not just a glorified haunting. I think I want to sleep without you for once, but the exorcisms must not be working any more. If they were, I wouldn’t still smell you on my sheets today. I think this is my recompense for loving you

The human body is forty percent stardust- and I can get into the math behind that, but the important part is that we carry the legacy of far off galaxies in our bones, and the thing is, stars sing Somewhere in between lightwaves and inaudible frequencies and gravitational pulls, they are singing, and no one can hear them, but it’s still happening, they are dancing with each other and brushing orbits like we brush hands and lips and hipbones and when they die, it takes eons for their light to fade from our constellations “Our” is the wrong word, though. The stars don’t dance for us and we have no claim on the patterns their orbits leave in the sky above us, but we do have their history, and the things they leave behind when they die The human body is forty percent light and music and fire, but all we do to honor that is try to burn each other down

here's what i know: you've got a flicker crackle of bonfire warmth sitting just below your ribcage and the sparks float up around the edge of your voice when you talk and i can feel them settling over me like firework ash in the aftermath, leaving me with indie soundtrack dreams of you and me- here's what i know: you have eyes like fucking stars, you've got a look like you're trying to change the world, i didn't know that angels looked like tired hipster college boys but you've got creation dripping from your fingertips and if that's not a mark of divinity i really don't know what is- here's what i know: there are black holes in my bones and the ghosts refuse to leave, they're too busy keeping me up, having midnight talks with the cobwebs in my hair- here's what i know: i want to wander through galleries and take shitty polaroids and hold your hand and never let go, there is peace here, lingering in the corners of our smiles and the lines of our eyes, glowing like bottled fireflies, you're half a world away on the other end of the static cellphone line and it feels like you've been here all the time- here's what i know: somewhere in between falling apart and falling asleep, i fell in love with you

I am dreaming, and you are swallowing the moon alive (pills- in reality it was too many, oh god, you nearly died) I think she is screaming- or maybe that’s me you can’t or don’t want to hear me either way, you do not stop even when your heart does I am dreaming, and you are laughing like a jackal, lips moon dust blue over tombstone teeth And I have to ask- is that a smile or a death grin? How long till rigor mortis sets in? I am awake, and we are having a hurricane picnic We are putting on plaster smiles and refusing to look down so we don’t see the wreckage around us, we are eating tea and cakes, we are ignoring our bloody nails and split lips I am awake, and we are pretending everything is fine you are saying you think we should end and i am thanking my stars we both survived this and you are angry and hurt that i’m ready to let the car crash nightmares die like you nearly did We are dreaming and we act like we’ll still be friends tomorrow even though the bomb has dropped and the shrapnel nearly killed us all I am awake, and we don’t talk anymore

there’s a dead girl in my garden, love our dead girl in my garden, love she slid down my thighs all scarlet and strange and her heartbeat stopped against my palm and i held her there against me like loving her hard enough could bring her back and i buried her in the lillies i’ve grown since i was five our baby who wasn’t, our little ghost i’m sorry you couldn’t say goodbye, i’m sorry you weren’t there to see how she struggled to breathe for us, but know that she died fighting in a way that would make your sister proud our little love, our almost girl there’s a dead girl in my garden, love our dead girl in my garden, love and you’ve left me to bury her alone

i want to tell you that my hands smell of saltwater and i know you’d understand that i mean something more than that but i also know you’re not here to listen right now and so i pick sand from under my nails and feel sorry that none of it will get lost in your sheets tonight i am in the car three states from home, and at home there is a dead girl resting beneath my daylilies, and there are ghosts weighing down my shoulders, and i know now why the novel is called atlas shrugged because i know now what happens when the world rests on the back of a single soul, what happens when the doubts creep in, how an upward twist of shoulders can destroy galaxies somewhere in the past a little girl in a pink party dress is sitting in an inner city laundromat, singing under her breath and picking the chocolate from  a bag of trail mix with her eyes fixed on the fanta machine in the corner like she can forget where she is by staring at the only bright spot in the room, her sneaker heels dragging back and forth like pendulums counting down the time till home, and somewhere in the future i am watching her and wondering when that little girl stopped being me but this is not about dead things or collapsed galaxies or dingy laundromats, this is not even as much about you as i thought, but it is about this: i am driving home from the bay with a lapful of polished shells and water in my hair and you are like a black hole at my side, the violent, rending absence of something, but my hands smell like seasalt and i belonged to the sea before i belonged to you and this love is only damaged, not destroyed, and yes, the lack of you is terrible, but the hole you left is beside me, not in me, and she is dead and you are gone but i am here, and somewhere miles away, you are breathing, and that means there’s always room for us to heal look. this is not about dying. this is about burying things. this is about letting them grow.

Tired as a rock that refuses to break In the middle of winter- Singsongs of a choir grinding to a halt. Her voice cracks like a car windshield hitting a signpost “caution, children at play” There’s snow melting in her hair and she would brush it away But her hands are restlessly skittering down his ribcage- He says “I’m sorry” as though that fixes anything Sorry doesn’t cut it, but fingernails do They rip through his skin like glass through cartilage- Not quite bones yet. Face-to-mask with a monster’s apologist, She fears the emptiness below his ribcage. She knows that they will always wind up here As plainly as she knows that she was built to love boys like him Sharp edged and acid tongued He may be empty But she is the one with beads of his blood on her fingertips Breaking skin to prove a point Because maybe broken will be better than gone

1. “but if you loved me, why’d you leave me?” i left because i had no choice, because you were rotting under my hands, because i would die for you in a heartbeat but i will not be what kills you, because i never should have kissed you, because we drown each other with our words, because- 2. “i loved you” i loved you too. i loved you more than i can say, i loved you like summer and swimming and strawberry smiles and too big hoodies, i loved you like stars until we broke, but then i loved you like the way i love snow and hunger pangs, like i love razor blades, like the way i love the things that kill me, and i swear, i would have stayed but- 3. “i can’t handle this” shh, my love, i know, i’m sorry, my tongue is too sharp when i’m tired, and you are too cold when you’re sad, and this is turning ugly, turning bitter, you bought me cough drops and ice cream when i was sick but you used suicide like a weapon to get what you want, i wrote you love poems but tore you down for fun, felt loving you in my teeth, and i’m sorry it has to be this way but- 4. “we shouldn’t talk anymore” you’re right, of course. i know the thought of me festers in your veins, i know i couldn’t be what you deserved, i know we went toxic, i know, i know, but- 5. “fuck you" well, fuck you too, darling. i was not the only sinner here, not the only bitter tongue, not even the first to throw a punch. it took you a week from the first time i admitted i would kiss you before you said you would kill yourself if i left you, turned loving you into something i had to do because i couldn’t let you die, planted the seed of rot, don’t act like you forgot, let’s not pretend you were only the victim, let’s not pretend i don’t have reasons to say- 6. "goodbye” good luck, i’ll miss you.

I want to tell you that the sunrise leaked through my cracked roof and stained my hands and face and sheets, that it pooled on the floor and i slipped and fell, that i must have swallowed some in my sleep because the world is cherry red today, and i am spitting the same shade, that is what drowning feels like- like the moment when you delete me from your contacts, like knowing he took your side in a war i didn’t know existed, a war i never would have fought. please. it’s been a day and i am tired already, let me lay down my arms and come home, it’s too cold here alone and i don’t know how i’m supposed to sleep without one of you breathing soft by my ear, don’t know how i’m supposed to focus when i’m still having car crash nightmares, still sleeping in your jacket just to feel like i can breathe- -please. i swear that the only wounds i meant to pour salt in were my own, the lesions i left on my knees when i fell for you, the places you can see my bone, tell me how to save this and i’ll die to do it, please, the winter chill is under my skin and i just want to be warm again, oh but i do repent me of my sins that i did kill this- -please. i swear i didn’t know.

I’m leaving this in case you ever look Like I’m leaving the things you gave me in box beneath my bed (the one we broke making out like drunk college kids, the one i yelled at you for) (it was my fault too) The one i’m not planning to wake up in tomorrow because i’m not planning to wake up tomorrow because the world just ended and there is no sleep in purgatory because I broke your heart and when i breathe i feel the shards of it in my throat because you hate me and i deserve that but i love you so much that losing you has shattered me like the legs of all the china dolls i owned as a child that i destroyed with careless love like every person that has ever mattered like my baby sisters faith in me the same delicate all trusting faith you had before i proved i don’t deserve it proved i don’t deserve to be compared to constellations or desserts or blessings if i was ever an angel, i fell before you met me i’m sorry i let myself touch you

A poet and a scientist fall in love on a ferris wheel… the question is, what happens next? Here’s the thing- i was raised on my daddy’s tall tales and my mama’s ghost stories, never quite stopped looking for fairies, still make wishes like prayers, still call wind storms witching weather, always believed in the thought of better, but always thought cinderella was screwed, hold on love, you just met, but i fell into this in a night and i have no regrets- Here’s the thing- i grew up in the bad part of a worse town with my daddy’s big fists and my mama’s loud temper and a boy across the street who had staples under his cornsilk hair from the last time his daddy threw a chair, still remember the way the blood made him look like he was leaking a sunset, got my first sex talk from a girl a year younger than me, a skinny little razor-child, all baby blues and blood-and-bruise, and everyone knew but no one did shit and fuck, she was six, and I can’t trust for shit but your hand on my throat felt as safe as a kiss- Here’s the thing- i was born into my mama’s culture, 3rd generation immigrant baby, all american, yes, but always knowing what my great granddaddy ran from, what he brought with him, always carrying the stain of “different” on my bones like a fucking target but i slip into the only scraps of my first language i still speak and all you ask is what it means, i don’t get laughter or chipped teeth- Here’s the thing- this all combines into a girl with no use for tradition, don’t get the door for me it’s inefficient, angry little feminist bitch with scarred up wrists, gonna love so hard it burns the world out, gonna smash the ceiling and trash the rulebook, but you’re sweetly old fashioned and i think i could love this- Here’s the thing- i can’t stop falling for you and i don’t know if that makes me alice or icarus but i didn’t sleep last night cause i was writing this, i’m running off coffee and sugar, i’m craving you like a drug and if this is addiction then sign me up, i’d forgotten what it felt like to need someone like air, to love like worship, to say “home” and mean someone’s arms, to want as selfishly as i want you- -i think i’m trying to say that i need you and it scares me, that people leave, that you could break me, that i almost cry each time you kiss me, that i’ve redefined hell as life without you, that you held me as the sun went down, you said “we could have this”- I think what i’m trying to say is i hope “what happens next” is we make that come true.

Babe, you’ve got me buzzing worse than too many vodka cherries and i’ve been forgetting myself in the haze of you, in the way your eyes burn through me, the way your fingers move like you’re trying to memorize these times when i let go for a moment, when I pull you close and bite your lips did you know you make skin on skin feel like a love letter to the parts of me i keep tucked away? you kiss my scars like they are holy like you are offering benediction for my sins and yet you think you are damned but kid, i’ve made love to the monsters under my bed and i’ve kissed saints and angels and I promise you divinity and hellfire hurt in two different ways and you may be wicked but any universe where you are cursed is so goddamn broken that we may as well tear it down

The woods are lovely and love is weird and the first time I met you we were in a winter frozen forest and I sneezed so loud the echo almost made you fall from a tree It’s only just barely stopped hurting to remember these things but there’s still an old-bruise soreness of nostalgia to the sounds of the world in spring and god I don’t know if this will be the last time I write about you, or the second-to-last, or even the hundredth-to-last, but I know it’ll come someday I can hardly spend the rest of my life writing love letters to a ghost And you would want me to move on anyway

Here’s how it goes: My best friend kisses me and I say another girls name. We realize we are better sisters than lovers. A week later I am toe to toe with the girl who’s name I whispered into my first kiss, and I press my lips to hers like a prayer. She kisses back. Our friendship evolves. I don’t lose anyone. Here’s how it goes: A year later my brother in all but blood kisses me and I push him away. I tell him we won’t work and that I refuse to lose him to a messy break-up down the line. He laughs and says I’m right. I go and kiss the girl with thick brown curls instead, and she kisses back. I don’t lose anyone. Here’s how it goes: I meet a pair of boys across the country and fall in love. They’ve been best friends since fourth grade and they’re not about to stop over some girl. I visit them over the summer and kiss both of them in a hard plastic arcade booth. They toss jokes back and forth over my head. I bring them home and introduce them to the girls I love. We fit. I don’t lose anyone.   Here’s the truth: My best friend kisses me and I say another girls name. We make a date for saturday, and I think I’m in love.  A week later I am toe to toe with the girl who’s name I whispered into my first kiss, and I am not brave enough. Our friendship dies. We haven’t spoken in six months. I lose both of them. Here’s the truth: A year later my brother in all but blood kisses me and I kiss back. I tell him I love him and let him touch me in ways I do not want. I know we will break up. I still go kiss the girl with thick brown curls. I lose both of them. Here’s the truth: I meet a pair of boys across the country and fall in love, but only tell one of them. They’ve been best friends since fourth grade but that ends when I show up. I visit them over the summer and sit with them in a hard plastic arcade booth, and kiss my boyfriend while trying not to reach for the last piece of my soul. I do not bring them home, and there is no one to introduce them to anyway. I break up with the boy I admitted to loving. It is not pretty. He hates me for hurting him. I cannot lie anymore. My soul aches for what I have left. I lose part of myself.