#rrc3030

When I was little, I thought my mother was saying 'girl cheese sandwich' instead of 'grilled cheese'. Now, I sometimes think I am a lesbian, despite the men I fuck.

I judge if the street is safe for crossing by whether the light has turned, not whether the cars have stopped.

Asking my favorite kind of tea is like asking for my favorite book, or song -- oh, sure, I've got one, but if I told you you'd get the wrong idea.

My father once, when I was very small, said the most sure fire way for me to break his heart would be to start smoking cigarettes. Which was lousy of him, honestly, because it's not really a story I can tell if I want people to think I'm a serious poet.

somewhere on Manhattan's Upper West Side, there is an apartment unaffected by my slinking

into yellow taxi forgiveness under that twinkling purple morning last May. its walls

are not aching towards shuddering frame of me, just passing through. like here in

South Central Aprils, car exhaust air opening in ripples swallowing spaces I leave behind with each step. back

east, there is a boy with my sleeping silhouette still caught in his camera lens. my

absence shrinks even as it blooms, lost in the pages of the book I left him the last time I was

What’s hardest is how our sadness is never the same. Mine, clawing, cloying, vast and cavernous in its need.

Yours, so pointed and small, oil-slicked fish scale, pushing with a pulse.

Habitually, as if in need of something to do with my hands, I make tea. Mug after porcelain mug, countertop cacophony of blacks and greens, it keeps pouring.

as soon as we met on our front porch, his name spilled from my lips and still, I was watching yours.

how quickly we became stalemate. how odd that I didn't know. after all, my favorite Taylor Swift album is titled "Red", and your bedroom walls are painted orange; should've known we'd be a shade off-kilter. loves like this don't get radio play, so

I'm sorry it was my idea to fuck you first. sorry we only find distractions in shared bedsheets, bottles, and bongs. sorry my car alarm heart refused to stop blaring through sputtering speakers, sorry I can only write these when I'm sorry, I'm sorry

about her. empathetically, of course, not apologetically, I can't be sorry for a hurt you knew before either of us knew my name, I can only hope that, when it is my turn to do the hurting, it will sting, but not stain --

(“you steal the air out of my lungs, you make me feel it”) Smoke blooms hot and hard and sharp like steps I take down Vermont after dark. Today, it’s not dark, today, I am coughing smoke up in laughter puffs, zipper chest, pull me hard, laugh with me harder –

(“I pray for everything we lost, buy back the secrets”) He’s talking about Berkeley again, but calling it San Francisco. We agreed to leave that night untouched, but monsters aren’t so scary back down south and anyway, he’s still laughing.

(“your hand forever’s all I want”) Every day, I rediscover a way to be grateful, even if my reasons have not changed in a while. They’ll change soon. I’ll tell you about it when they do.

but that's the greatest secret -  even when I am no longer here, I still will have been. I will still have loved you, laughed with you, picked oranges from our backyard tree.