Melon Cloudy

‘choose.’ i said, ‘me or her.’ but it wasn’t that simple not for you it wasn’t coke or pepsi cats or dogs sun or rain it was the difference between ‘i love you’ and ‘i need you’ soft goodnight kisses or rough morning sex big smiles and tenderness and a girl that just made you so happy or late nights and alcohol and a girl that made you feel alive so when i said, ‘choose.’ when i said, ’me or her.’ you looked at me like i was asking you the most unfair question in the world you said, ‘i love you,’ and my heart fell on cracked pavement broke right down the middle because i realized that it wasn’t the difference between coke or pepsi it was the difference between ‘i love you’ and ‘i need you’ and you told me you loved me which could only mean you needed her

Ever since my grandmother died, I’ve been worried about the imperfections of memory. On long drives, when my thoughts inevitably turn to her, I wonder how the memories have changed since the last time I flipped through them. Was that the shirt she was wearing when she taught me how to make Spanish rice? Was her hair still black or was it grey by then? Did she make that joke, or was it my uncle - or am I mixing my memories like two radio stations battling for control at the county line?

boundaries drawn

Silent Magic

i write about him too often for comfort, boogey man in my closet with poisoned coffee. he knows i need caffeine, he knows i need a place to hide at night from the shadows, too, he knows i need his approval even when i don’t want it, he has read through every diary i have kept, so i have started folding pages into airplanes in hopes of escape, but burning has proven more permanent.

I force-feed this sorrow,

My brother once showed me a piece of quartz that contained, he said, some trapped water older than all the seas in our world. He held it up to my ear. “Listen,” he said, “life and no escape.”