I am not cold, I am not sick, I am not silly

And the blanketing snow says

           hush,

           hush,

           death is a part of the cycle

 And the shivering starlight beckons

           come,

           come,  

           our light is beautiful and so is yours

 And the crackling recordings all sing

           peace,

           peace,

           glory comes to the meek

And your soul sighs

           sink,

           sink,

           because sinking is inevitable

 And your steps slow

And your breath fogs your glasses

And makes halos of the streetlamps

Come to think of it It’s been cloudy ever since you left here So I don’t know why you’re so surprised When I call you my sunshine

There are no songs about feeling like this All the songs about people far away Are people who care a lot Singing to people who don’t care anymore

And lord knows why I worry That the person whose greatest fear is losing me Will find someone closer to their life And leave me in the worst way

The wind tried to push me back-- Roared in my ears Like it was trying to drown out the condemnations Hollered down from a concrete bench By a signboard-wearing preacher. 

While his daughter hid her face in her mother’s one-armed hug,  The other arm wheeled a stroller Back and forth, back and forth Probably to soothe the baby against the yelling of her husband. 

God does not will, apparently, That I suffer the damnation “That! I! Have! Earned!”  The wind didn’t will that I hear anything about it. 

     If she could’ve jumped over the desk, she would’ve. Instead, she darted around it as fast as heels and a pencil skirt would allow. Before her visitor had a chance to laugh at her awkward gait, they were cut off by a fierce hug.

I want to swallow a diamond Embed a ruby in my womb Braid sapphires into my hair Have an emerald weigh down my tongue And replace my heart with an opal

If you blew a kiss into the sky And it hit a cloud Maybe with some luck That cloud would carry it here And drop it on my head

You are, after all My early weather report Rain falls on you Before clouds ever get to me

What I’m saying is  Raindrops get to kiss your forehead More often than I do

To stave off the demons of sleep That threaten to pull me in deep I'm penning a work To not be a jerk So I won't snore or snuffle a peep

~

The voice of this prof as he rants Is similar to soothing chants It pulls down a hood Makes me dozy for good I'm sorry but I stood no chance!

~

I'm amused constantly by the things That observance to my notice brings For example, a bag With a sandwich has lagged For a week just outside this building

~

My darling, I'm thinking of you (Something I quite often do) Your hands or your heart Whether near or apart Make it impossible to be blue

~

I like sour things The tingling in the back of my mouth 2 million years of evolution telling me “poison” There’s always charm in risk

The slide of my teeth into a cold apple Makes my tongue press against my teeth The same way it does when I kiss you

There’s congruency to it all The mouth watering feeling       When I think of candy       When my hips surge forward

The pucker of my mouth around lemonade Or around a smile At a compliment I can’t quite believe 

We can’t get married, It’s not what you think, And it isn’t you— It’s me Hear me out.

One day, when we’re married Nestled in blankets on our mattress on the floor Partially clothed Perfectly content My alarm is going to ring You’ll shift, roll over Pin my arm under you And I’m going to die When I have to get up and leave you there I’ll crawl back into bed fully dressed For an extra five minutes in your arms Kiss your eyelids a thousand times In a thousand different farewells

I grew out of a seed in the ground I am not, though, a plant I awoke one day to find my feet trapped in the soil Shook it off, and tried to make sense of the world 

I stretched my arms towards the sky Tested my knees once, twice I jumped. Landed. Gravity shot fire through my legs

Face first in the soil I’d just escaped Life as I knew it was a circle That began and ended nowhere, But at some point always involved being stuck in the mud

There once was a couple of nerds Whose courtship was bound up in words The distance is there But it better beware 'Cause texts can fly faster than birds

----

The difficult thing about stress That nobody wants to address Is the stupid belief That desire for relief Is something we ought to repress

----

I have other people’s skeletons in my closet And before you scream, I didn’t put them there They snuck in over teary nights and anxious mornings The clinks of the bones that fall from the mouths of others Live in my protection 

I fuss And dust Arrange and categorize Try to make a pattern Or a system Try to find a space for everyone As moldering bones that aren’t mine press against the inside of my lips

 I hate throwing up I’ve swallowed worse bile than this In the name of decorum But dogs choke on chicken bone fragments And your anorexia your assaults your gender your sexuality your harm your suicidal thoughts— They’re tearing at my throat