the emotional equivalent of watching paint dry

I’m sorry for ever looking at you
like you were anything less

like you were anything less
than the best or worst thing to ever happen

anything less
than a meteor crushing full-force
into the fallible planet that is my soul
and leaving an indent larger
than the hole in my center,
a fertile and infinite crater
if it were possible to carve out that place in me
where love is born, incubated, and grown

but even if you were to gorge on that messy chunk of me,
you’d replace it with the magic that makes birds fly
you’d make it my own walden pond,
the treasure in a maze only I could get to

I’m sorry for ever looking at you
like you were less than
a garden to wander through
a thicket dense with wonder and lust
a curiosity more opaque than the mystery of breath

moonflower, sunflower

I cried with the weeping that blew out my hair

I smiled with the pouring that gave the running water goosebumps

I was the tide that makes rivers climb with violence and cower back from truth, too

the streams are not so small,
they trickle uncharted, unnamed
and when one dries, there’s one less filling up the ocean

the sun, she bestows revival
that abrasive-clean baptism, overwrought leather skin, spotless whitewashed mind

she fixates on your flaws and obliviates the dirt in you

she lets you feel that you are sometimes everything
and at the same time nothing without her

while our moon blooms and wilts, a beautiful poisonous flourish of tricks

he looks out for the dreamers, the hopeful fools they are, when he’s up for it

’cause there’d be no paintings or classics without them,
and someone has to remind us of what we so often aren’t

— a silver plate, a crescent birthmark on newborn skin,
a single light as guide through the woods

and sometimes limitless skies so close, you can feel their currents strumming on your brain

and sometimes so terrifying, as scaling shapeshifter cliffs in the dark

whatever it is, I reach for the gourd and drink with an impossible thirst
to be more like waves and rain
and less like a swimmer within

great cups of tea

i’m passionate about steeping great cups of tea
and picking the harvest in the morning,
gathering red-faced babies in the hammock of my skirt,
my bottom turned up for the diseased flies to stick their noses into

i’ve got weak legs for the sun and i sit before him
like his radiance is the breath that rushes
into my passageways and the fruits stacking in my belly, too:
      all the energy i steal is mine and has always been

i sweat at the sight of the trees whilst in their dance
they move and shake, a subtle, sleep-like trance in the rain
— everything is rhythmic here,
      everything is perfect
      everything makes sense

           the magic happens

           and while it does its unpracticed thing   ,

i wait for the sky to open up
i wait for a ballad to profess its score over my head
and for nature to prove its fidelity
i wait for the burst of warmth in my groin
or for my eyes to roll inward
and all the light to cast aqua shades of jazz-tune cool
over the ridges, the tops of houses, where the land
meets the water and the people face their fears

i wait to devote to something beyond the act of waking
and loving the emptiness of each new day

for my mystification of existence to turn into a realness,
a relic i can read to my unborn children
and slip into the hands of friends
until the last sip of every cup is gone
and we become dizzy,
and give up on wondering why the world spins

and then, simply, i could live
passionless

questions we won’t ask

how long have you been lonely?
is a question I won’t dare to ask.

sometimes I feel the long depths
of that part of you
when sitting over dinner,
the beers getting warm
and heavy with condensation:

it’s in the darkness of your apartment
like the dank, cold surface
of a bear’s cavern.

it’s limitless.

and it’s in the shadows your clutter
casts, too.

it’s in all you’ve collected,

like me and my trinkets
and my thriftstore memories.

for you, it’s in the overstock
of toilet paper and coffee,
the stacks of books that pile
waiting like killers on death row.

…

how long have you lived like this?
it’s a question I won’t dare to ask.

you’re prepared for the worst,
but chanting for the best.

and it’s in the song you wrote
and sung
to ghost town bars
like Hamlet in his famed soliloquy.

and even though you won’t play it for me,
I know the chorus
because I sung it for so long, too.

…

it goes something like this:

replacing the fish in the bowl
when he shrivels
saying goodbye with a shoulder shrug,
purchasing another
at the same pet store
in the same punctured jar
with the same sad identical eyes
and flimsy fins
that couldn’t keep him afloat in the wild.

or hosting the three little pigs
in your filthy living space
and in your grinding head
and clicking fingers,
insisting that the fairy tale scribes
got their stories mixed up
and you could go to the carbon copies
and hack them,
waiting for Goldilocks
to come barging in.

…

did you expect it to happen this way?
it’s the question I won’t ever ask.

it’s why we don’t talk about
when we haven’t showered for days,
and we rinse ourselves with the wind
or another harsh, curse-laden licking,
so we can keep going,
humbled that we’re not pristine.

it’s why all the poems in our archives
are about imaginary men and women,
with real flaws and fake irises
and skin that was every color
of the spectrum, alien-like
and impossible.

…

but if I were to ask
a question I dare not ask,
you’d say you were a virgin
when you met me

and I’d rebut with the fable
of my reincarnation,
how once I hated how the world
looked, how proud and blue
it was from the sky’s view

then I came down
and sprouted from the landfill
and no one cared how I grew,
but admired how my petals fluttered
and simply knew that I’d clean up nice
and look good perched on a sunny windowsill,
decoration for a kitchen sink shared by lovers.