Should Have Bought a Fish

I miss you

so I thought,

I’ll get a fish.

So I almost bought a fish tank

but then

I changed my mind.

So I still miss you,

fish or no fish,

and my apartment still feels emptier.

But maybe “emptier” is not the right word,

it feels like it has lost something.

Like maybe,

it swallowed you whole

and you’re still somewhere inside of it

but not anywhere I can see.

I still feel you there but maybe it’s just

my hand soap

because it smells like your aftershave.

Don’t worry,

I won’t say anything, I won’t ask

you anything.

I bit my cheek crying,

thinking about your feet

and my feet,

the way you would smash my feet between

yours. Like a sandwich.

I was crying

thinking about how

the only time I ever used the word “love”

towards you

was in regards

to your feet.

I did love them, I think.

They were so soft and mine so dry.

Something about them made me feel small

like when I was a kid

and I would sleep in this small space on the floor

in-between the wall and my sister’s bed.

Something about your feet

reminded me of that square patch of carpet.

Your feet made me cry and then I thought,

I should not be crying about feet.

I should take a ceramics class or something,

feel wet clay in my hands,

sculpt nothing into something,

I thought,

I should take a ceramics class so I enrolled in a college

down the street but I never paid any of the fees.

It doesn’t matter because

I am just thinking of ways not to miss you

and I’m not sure what will be next,

maybe this poem

or a hike or tea with an old friend

or a good book or a hot bath

or painting my fingernails

or a nice nap in the sun

except naps remind me of you and

I am back to where I started,

just trying not to miss you.

I guess first,

I will try this poem.

When You Made It Out Ok but I Didn’t

I’ll think about

your green eyes

inside of stairwells,

the small spaces off to the side

where I imagined

holding you once.

Or,

inside of an elevator.

The yellow light

reflecting off of our skin,

making it look warm,

making it light up

and glow

like

all of the synapses,

valleys,

gulfs,

and trenches

of my brain:

a landscape filled

with land mines,

places

you cannot face.

Places

you

would

not

make it out of

alive.

I’ll think about your

uneven eyebrow

under streetlights,

in empty parking lots.

Holding your hand

for a split-second

to avoid getting lost

inside of my own mind.

Or,

inside of a crowded market.

How you close your eyes

slightly when you’re feeling

shy.

My entire body

sweating

for the rest

of the night.

A landscape filled

with land mines,

places without excavation.

Places you would

not

survive.

Floodplains, Footholds, Flatlands

Time follows the jagged lines

of the ridges of my cortex:

an apocalyptic landscape

of images

thoughts

and feelings

to unfold.

Deep within the valleys

and the depressions,

what was all once

just a really long time ago

becomes red rock formations:

Memories that have turned from dust

into stone.

Talking to the Dead

A woman in San Francisco

has your heart,

I mean literally,

has

your heart

beating inside of her chest

the systolic and the

diastolic pressure

the arterial and the

venous the

same heart that stopped beating inside of you

is beating inside of

someone else.

A man in Fresno

has your kidneys,

I mean literally,

he has one of your kidneys

filtering the blood inside of his body.

His daughter called on the telephone,

she cried and gasped for air through the speaker,

we all listened and held our breath.

She said thank

you thank

you thank you

but she was not thanking us,

she was thanking you.

The kidney

took well,

she said, the body accepted the kidney,

her father accepted the kidney,

she accepted the kidney,

everyone thankful for the gifts

that you were left giving away.

The woman with your heart, would have

died, they said. Would not

have survived,

she had—

she has

three small children.

We have one small child,

we had—

one small child,

we used to have you.

You did not survive, but the woman with the

heart, with all of the children, the one in the bay,

she made it okay.

A man in Fresno has one of your kidneys.

His daughter called us on the telephone,

we all listened on speaker as she cried,

as she gasped for air.

We held our breath as she said thank you

thank you thank

you,

but she was not thanking us,

she was thanking you.

She said her father has been waiting six years for a kidney,

that the kidney took well, that his body

accepted the pound of flesh that you

were left

giving away.

A woman in San Francisco has your heart.

I mean literally, she has your heart, pounding

inside of her chest.

A letter came in the mail, it said she had,

it said she has,

three small children, it said

without your donation she would not have survived.

The man with his kidney, the woman with

her heart,

your body

quartered

and divided

and given away.

As a woman in an ICU

hovered above you,

reading all of our words,

all of our sentiments,

our deepest love,

thrown into the void,

hopefulness towards a future

that we were all left giving

away.

Florida St

Do you remember the house off Florida

with the toilet in the bathroom

that never worked quite right?

I drive by there sometimes,

looking for the pathway to your door

that was always lost in darkness.

I remember your plaid couch,

smoking inside without cracking the window

and then putting our cigarettes out in pillar candles.

The smoke dancing and disappearing

in the dark

the same way that time does,

the same way that feelings do.

Look, what I'm trying to say is that

these memories of you

unfold themselves like a map

that took me growing up

to understand how to read:

The scary end of your street that I would get lost on

if I made the wrong turn

is a road that I travel daily now,

the carwash that you would meet me behind

to walk me to coffee shops that stayed open all night

became a place I would run through

summer evenings after

moving just around the corner.

The mystery of it all to my teenage mind is

unraveled through spaces

I start to know like the back of my hand.

Just a few weeks ago,

I turned off into the parking lot in Sunset Cliffs

where you used to hold my hand in the back of your car

and I would think

"why doesn't he want more from me?" and now I thought

"thank god that he didn't."

The End

I have to try and find words. I don’t know what else to do.

Yesterday, I planned to walk to work this morning. 1.6 miles. Easy.

Instead, I walked 1.6 miles from the Reno, NV airport to a LaQuinta hotel nearby.

Instead, I saw your body laying there. A breathing tube in your throat. One black eye. Blood crusted in your nostrils. Your big, strong line-backer body having oxygen pumped into it by machines.

Instead, I held your hand through a sheet. Instead, I ran my hand along your collarbone. Afraid to disturb the IVs. Instead, I ran my finger through your thick half-mexican hair.

Instead. I lost my baby brother. Instead. My best friend had zero activity left in his brain.

Instead. I held your hand through a sheet but it wasn’t your hand because you weren’t inside of there.

Instead, you were taken from me today. Taken from us. From everyone who ever was lucky enough to know you or unlucky not to have met you yet.

I love you Nathan Scot. You were all of us kids first true love. Our little baby.

I hope whatever happens after death, even though you would argue that it’s nothingness and I’d most likely agree, I hope there was no pain.

I hope you left peacefully.

I love you. Now and forever. More than any words that I could ever find.

— 6/4/2015

A Thousand Times

There were

words

as symbols,

cymbals—

the quiet roll

of a snare drum

slipping from your hands.

Late-night phone calls from Kolkata

your hair dripping wet

with the water of ashes,

smoke in your mouth,

your body like music

that never stopped playing.

A thousand silk scarves

tied around my wrists.

Photographs of the happiest

I can ever remember being,

both of our cheeks flushed red.

The time you found me among

the tallest trees on Earth,

the entire Pacific Northwest,

forests that ran into beaches

and all of our 16-year-old fantasies.

Snowflakes bigger than our hands,

on our tongues,

your eyes half-open and half-shut,

the language that I made up

just to say:

“I loved you once” and

“please stay”

in a thousand different ways.

Here is the poem I never gave you,

the poem I wrote you a thousand times

when you were hundreds of miles away.

Here is the poem I never gave you,

I’m sorry that it’s a thousand lifetimes

too late.

The Death of Physics

I write poems to people

I barely know

because I don’t know how

to talk to you.

They go like this:

I cannot taste God

so we simulate the creation of the entire universe

in our bed sheets:

there was the death of physics

and then

there was the death

of me.

Sometimes I try to write letters to you

and all they ever say is:

“I lost myself”

and

“It’s been months now

but I still can’t be found”

Now tell me what to do

with my mouth.

I don’t know when

I became terrified of you.

I had nightmares

of being ripped apart by wild animals

of their teeth on my hands

of their fur wrapped around my spine of their

impending doom

and fuck,

if it wasn’t just all

you.

I feel warm thinking about

how angry you would be

if you could see me now,

my agency,

if you knew about all the poems

I write to other people

that go:

Come kiss me again

in the middle of my mother’s street,

show me what you know how to do

with your hands and

I will show you what I know how to do

with my teeth.

Blood Pooling in the Bone-dry Valley of My Skin, of My Heart, of My Hands

I wake myself up in the middle of the night

choking on poetry but

in the morning,

none of it sounds right.

I wanted to say something about

the soil erosion of my skin,

about your teeth like pick-axes

sharpening themselves on the backs

of my knees.

My sheets smell like someone else

but I can’t bring myself to wash them.

I don’t want him to disappear.

I wanted to say something about

the bone-dry valley of my breast,

about the arid well of my heart.

I take a shower and commit to the idea

of washing him off of me,

even though I want to tell all of the parts of him

still stuck to me

not to go.

But it’s too soon for begging.

I wanted to ask you if you had forgotten

how to beg,

or how to write

or how to stay still.

My chest grows and swells like the

sea,

a rapid constant movement.

Why has it taken me this long to compare

the pools of blood inside of me

to a monstrous body of water?

Why when it drowns me just

as easily,

when it is just as easy to spill,

when it is just as easy to drink,

when it is just as easy to dry up.

Anything

I think of you thinking of me. I listen to girls outside on my street corner, laughing empty into the night. Each sound they make bounces off of the concrete and gets tangled in my ears. I don’t owe you anything, I remind myself. In my head, on repeat, there’s a line of poetry that goes: “what better way to hold your hair, what better way?” And then I’m thinking of all of the better ways. Then I am thinking of what better way to have held your hands or your hair or your voice or your sorrow or your moods or your attention or your bedroom door or your laughter. I don’t want to keep wondering, do you understand? It’s useless. There was no better way. There was only one way and when that way wasn’t enough then there was no way. The way destroyed itself simply by being. It destroyed itself in a way that I can’t, in a way that I refuse to. There was no better way because I am only one way– this way. And I don’t owe you anything for it, I constantly have to tell myself. Anything.