employer: so how do you like working here!

I want to be open for you. Like the moonflower at dusk, pale and luminescent in the heat. Like the doors of a church carved into something forgiving - I want to be a place for you to rest. Honey, please listen when I tell you this. Love is safe. Do you hear me? I’ve put all the pain away. Everything sharp is wrapped up. Everything loud is hushed. Love is the wind that makes the leaves dance. You are the softest part of the morning.

Sometimes he was a key hidden in barn rafters. Sometimes moments are gestural. I drink wine but can’t taste it. I dream of wolves or staying taller than what grows in the field.

Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women, kitchen of love, bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy. Sometimes, the men, they come with keys, and sometimes the men, they come with hammers.

One The Victorians honoured human hair Because it was the only trait of the body That remained after death. I shaved my legs in your shower I hid long strands of myself in your pillowcases, This is all that is left Two Thinking of someone else during sex Is a cardinal sin punishable by nothing Three The heart is wanting The heart is perpetually two years old The heart is bad at sharing The heart is a hungry gas tank The heart is not a metaphor Four When the teacher asks you what grade you think you deserve You will always say b+ Five Ninety percent of Americans will vote for Obama Because the night before the election He will slow dance with his wife And kiss her forehead and we will want so badly To believe they actually fucking love each other Six Writing a list of ways I could be better And writing a suicide note Are the same thing Seven The heart lives in a packed elevator: It doesn’t know what floor it’s waiting for But it wants It wants It wants to get off Eight The Victorians believed that When you write a poem from an airplane That moment becomes suspended in the sky forever Like an ornament in God’s mobile. So now you know Somewhere between Phoenix and Las Vegas A thousand miles up There you are Like a grocery list pinned to blue