The Dark Ocean & The Calm Sea

I am

the ribbon of nylon

between your back teeth,

a clean

mint rule.

The definite light bouncing off of the countertop:

the sutures between the animal skull.

I will bend into the shape of a torus:

all metal linked through holes

chaining you to the base of

a tree

in front of the house I have built deep

within the marrow:

red blood cells white blood cells

and me.

You stand before me tall and naked,

I am the foothold of the mountain

wondering where all of your round curves

have gone?

I cannot find the words

while I am on top of you making love kissing the

depressions in your cheeks.

I did not look after you for long:

your feet merely skimming the water basin

while the water started losing its warmth.

I am kneeling on the brick bottom

I am the plate

as it melts back down

into the earth’s sweet body,

I am the heat of the core

as it rises back to the surface.

I looked for you everywhere I

LOOKED EVERYWHERE I held my breath

as I put my head under the strong ocean current

I sobbed violently in the dark alone

with you asleep lazily in my bed

I escaped the marrow

and became terrified

of the dark ocean

and the calm sea.

An Impending Doom

It has something to do with:

The Mexican woman I watched out of the car window with no teeth, laughing, gaping holes in the sides of her mouth. Of how when I thought of her I thought “Hispanic” but mostly I just thought of her tan skin and the way the sun must just sit on top of it, never absorbing any further, to keep it as clean and as delicate as it seemed to be. And how I felt like if I could look at her everyday for a split second for the rest of my life, I would be able to understand something bigger about the world–but we both just looked away.

The way the air from my bedroom window seems to come down only in one spot and rest slowly, coldly, on my left arm and how even if I cover it, I can still feel the cold like it has seeped into my body and I don’t mind it because it’s always there but I feel like if I could watch it happen–it would look something like water falling from a very small, high place.

The way I have been letting the words take over parts of my brain, only if for a few seconds, and how sometimes they feel paralyzing, even now, even when I’m an adult, and how that is the only comfort or certainty I have towards who I am going to become. Who I know that I will be.

(separate) An impending (but entirely real) doom.

As Smooth as Glass

The rain hit the glass

in a slow movement

and through a tiny pinhole in the speaker,

the music softly came.

Except it didn't go into my ears

and instead went onto my tongue

where it felt heavy enough to swallow,

and smoothly it moved down my throat

until it found all the feeling

in my belly,

and it felt sweet—like the white

and yellow flowers that your mother

keeps on the dining room table

that is made out of the cedar

that we cut down together

while it was still light enough

to see your hands outside.

Sometimes, I see something

as far down as the bottom,

but something small begins to lift me

back up

and I notice how my foot sits crooked

on the gas,

the same way you would turn

your foot sideways

to gently tap your guitar pedal

and I hum but it's only loud enough

inside of my own head,

and I can barely hear Jonah

when he tells me

that the tail lights flail out in front of him

in one single straight line

but I know that he is really telling me

that he knows how far away God is

and I feel his anger

when I touch his arm

and we say our prayers loudly

in the dark

but God wouldn't even hear them

if he were right across the street

from my Grandmother's house where

we found that tree

when the light was changing so quickly

and I think of your father

and his father

and his brothers and sisters,

chewing their lips while

making their offers

and I know

that their bones

have made shallow indents

in the earth but it can't

matter because it is layer

upon layer

upon layer

and when I think I have seen

the middle,

I rest my head in my hands

and notice how

we are the only ones awake

in the whole neighborhood

and I think that in some way

you have found a way into my

head

but I know that isn't true

when I hear the sweet

beginning of your brain's mathematics

pulling you to sleep

and I begin reciting their equations—

patterns as unintentional

as the landscape that follows us back home

to where you grab my small hand

in the dark

just as the sweat begins to

roll off of it

as smooth as glass.

South

It’s too early for me to be awake

so I pick your hair

out of the shower drain

and let the water run hot enough

to burn my skin.

I keep dreaming that I sit across the table from God

and we talk slowly

about the size of the desert

while touching legs underneath the table.

My pride sits against my spine

full and heavy,

so I lean forward to let my disks bend

and to let it crawl out between my chapped lips

that hurt in the Arizona sun.

In the afternoon,

my father points out

state penitentiaries in every city

that we pass by

and I hate his precision

but secretly like the glow of yellow

from the high windows

and imagining the texture of an inmate’s hand

and his voice

as he cries in a very small space

like I have been doing my entire life

when nobody is ever really that lonely.

At night,

the wind chimes smash together to make a sound

that reminds me of church bells

and I like how you kiss me on the mouth

and I swear to God that I saw your head on a city bus

yesterday moving south

against crooked lines

that resembled your teeth

when I haven’t actually seen you in weeks

and I feel okay now.

Bigger Pictures

The body of a tree

is tied to a wooden rod

to correct the posture

of the landscape—

scoliosis of the outside world.

Oxygen bending at its backbone,

while I’m struggling to breathe

in Utah

houses crumble their architecture

against a skyline of dead grass

the color of wheat

that crawls over a highway

that keeps me moving while I lock my knees

and see the Star of David on a rooftop

Suddenly, I think of your mother

but mostly of Sylvia Plath

and sticking my head in an oven

to warm my locked jaw

and to boil the blood

I had begun to see

rise to the surface of my pink cheeks

in Texas

I remove myself only from this body

to empty my exhausted eyes

into a pillow that is soaking wet

even from five hundred miles away

and I’m learning to love this distance—

it is heavy and silent over a telephone wire

while you tell me about the corners

of a woman with mousy brown hair’s mouth

and how when she touches you

her fingers leave dents in the surface of your skin

that remind you of the spaces in-between airline seats

and that quiet hum of a jet plane’s engine

but they only remind me

of the two years that I spent hiding underneath covers

and trying to make out with the outline of your body

in the early morning hours

while beneath my headphones

in Nebraska

I can hear my brother laughing loud and obnoxious

from the front lawn of the city

that my mother grew up in.

The back of my neck begins to freeze

when the weather drops down to thirteen degrees

I’m smiling

while on the side of the road,

the cows start to stand up at dawn

while they move east

the clouds curl up over the tops of mountains

billowing like smoke

from a house on fire.

Childlike

And this is what I live for:

lit moon in a dark sky,

looking out the back window

with the light so

bright

the trees are

reflected in the back

of the truck

and you can see without

really seeing.

The quiet murmur of my

step-mom

singing to the songs

on the radio,

letting her breath

out in sighs.

I’m shutting my eyes

and the road

is unfolding in

circles

behind us.

I’m thinking of you.

Even more about how

this is what

I live for:

My brother is buried

in my lap,

snoring,

and I’m thinking

about how my leg is

running along his hand

and I’d die not to

wake him up.

I’d die a thousand times.

My dad drums his

fingers

along the steering wheel.

I follow the rhythm with my

feet.

He keeps switching

the beams,

letting the high ones

light the shadows.

He turns them off and

tells us that the moon

is bright enough to

light the street.

We scream and he laughs

and waits for

a rhythm to turn

them back on.

And we’re thinking

and driving

in circles

and I feel you

under my skin.

I bat my eyelids

in the dark of the car,

and it’s almost easy

to feel beautiful.

And this is what

I live for.

Well,

and you.

Calculus

The TV keeps repeating itself:

a monotone bible spoken aloud from a screen

and a couple of cable chords.

Here,

the trees grow over the curved slopes of the mountains like a fire.

Like a calculus equation.

The stomach of an orange that was ripe then

is now rotten,

the rind still stuck between my teeth.

My love and I like to put our jaws

up to one another’s

so we can feel ourselves chew.

His name pressing my tongue

further into your mouth

until I could feel your gums

like a thick forest of roads:

unraveling.

The sun fills his bedroom

like water being poured into a glass.

His eyes always have this look of boredom,

always high,

as he touches me slowly

and then slower

and

then

slower.

I hate the way his stomach

digests loudly

and I can hear it

from across the room.

Circles

I wrap my rhythms around you,

a small delicate, selfish

circle of my own.

But after a while,

I am not longer feeling love

and its transformation has left me

a quiet death

that won’t stop looking me in the face.

It becomes obvious that tomorrow,

we would like to be eaten by the earth.

Maybe move north on top of a highway

next to an ocean that never sleeps

and neither do we but right at this moment

the cold is so solid that I could almost

crawl inside of myself

and completely destroy my composure.

Time moves slowly but the time

is moving

and I can see its body as it stretches

across the sky.

Behind us is the west:

the quiet death that becomes more

and more muffled by the sea

but it still tries to put its hands

in front of me

and it only makes the east

grow a little bit brighter

so I feed myself

to the sun.

Four & A Half Years

I cannot sleep at night while you're gasping for air,

laying your heavy body upon an equation

that's crushed together

to form a single thread of mathematics.

Do you remember?

I used to say that about the roads from here to there.

Here to there, here to there.

It was all so simple then.

It was all so simple through telephone wires.

It was all so simple into a receiver.

We were so simple when we would pour words like water,

not minding when we would spill them everywhere,

not minding that we were going nowhere.

Do you remember?

I could draw the shape of your body in one line that never left the paper.

I could see your house as just a line from my door step to the edge of your bed.

I used to pretend that I had a voice

and that it spoke up every time you touched me

when I didn't want you to.

Pretending pretending pretending

that you had heard me a million times but

you still never stood up to leave.

When I think of the road

I hear you singing at the tops of your lungs

driving me home just so that you could sit next to me in a car for an hour,

then asking to stay the night.

Sleeping next to me almost without your clothes on

pretending to be there when you were always somewhere else,

when I was always someone else.

And I never did mind.

Not until you asked me what real love was

and I only could hold numbers on my tongue

until I was old enough to know what throwing your entire life away for someone else was like

until I was old enough to know what it was like

to be broken, broken, broken.

I hear your footsteps.

I know you long to be here sometimes and lie through your teeth

when you say there is distance between us.

You lie through your teeth when you say we have become

distant.

We have not become anything

because we are still

nothing. No

thing.

Not until I believe in things

again,

not until I believe that I exist

again,

not until I believe again.