An Explanation

i.
-Can you tell me who I am?
That was the day we hung out behind the Taco Bell
and ate soggy gas station sandwiches
playing Twenty Questions until I threw your cold gray sky for a loop
but the way I drank my slurpee was just so goddamn sexy
that you couldn't help but try to kiss the girl leaning away from you
and as soon as our chapped lips touched
the atmosphere exhaled
and I left you with a song of
jangling loops and a pounding beat.
                                  beat.
                                    beat.
that will reverberate
deep into the core of your swollen heart
and lotion-sticky fingertips
in the winter of my August
and all we are is a pair of puckered lips
and hands examining our faces in the mirror
all the cracks and scars and acne that I prize
because that little bit of imperfection
means I'm alive
signs of the battered young heart still pumping steadily
each beat the turn of a page:
here we are, wavering graceless and glacial
sweaty hands clasped and crackling
and your presence sucks up all my oxygen
and spits it up lazily at the disco dancers with their bodies
meshing in slow motion beneath the strobe lights.

anxious: remember that? We danced until 3 a.m.

Christmas Eve at the theatre:
The dancers in the Nutcracker move so fiercely
so stiffly, afraid to make a mistake
and in that brief moment I can see right through them
peeling back muscle and fat and dreams and fears
and we are their core
powering the dancing skeleton of the Sugar Plum fairy
with our flimsy paper money and applause.
Maybe when we make love tonight
she will feel it somewhere in the dim static of the auditorium
become the audience's savior for three hours
and gasp one last ragged bow for our approval
because she loves us.
                      Oh yes, she loves us.
you ought to know how she feels
because yes, sweetheart, I am at your core
fingers that refuse to lace with yours in the burning air
red blue yellow primary colors in a vodka bottle
and late night television when I should have tucked my hip into your hand.
                            [I'm so sick of roses.
                                  Buy me a tiger lily.]

But I missed you this summer in the Midwest
where the Kansas sky is neon blur
and dust coats the ragged scraps of crow that circle shimmering
cornfields, and oh, if you were there
we might have lain on the line that blurs the past and present
the perspiration slick on your chest the only beauty in sight
but I'm here and you're home
and my grandfather's trampoline is the closest I'll ever get to flight
while I count the ways
I could pretend to (not) love you
                          ['cause the Midwestern sun ain't half as harsh as I am.]

When I return, let's have a moment of silence
for my innocence
and celebrate beneath the fuzzy city lights--
we'll have coffee while I tell you about
everyone who isn't you
those tiger lily girls and snow cherry boys
who are so fucking beautiful it makes me weep to look at them
but their kisses fall flat and sour on me
like a child's shrill song in the microphone
at the school talent show
underdeveloped and overeager
                        (please baby. please.)
I don't want you to try to kiss the girl who's leaning away from you
so just take me to a jazz-and-blues club
so I can play it fast and loose
and in the fiercely improvised intoxication
nobody shines brighter
so let's sizzle the night away until we implode
sagging under the weight of our own fallacies and desperation
as we fuckfightfuckfight
barely smothering the noise that leaks through
the neighbor's cracked walls
c'mon, baby, I don't need you to bandage my wounds
let's see what you got
let's see who leaves who with scraped knees
and dirty knuckles
let's see who'll retreat to the liquor cabinet and
do the lonely two-step with their grandma's record player scratching the night away--
it's a date and I can't
tell the difference anymore.

Hindsight is always 20/20
look at the mirror, my knuckles, the memory of your face
when you realized THIS IS ME
with the torn skin and jack 'o lantern grin
and the fingernails that are dirty from digging into my past
I am denim/leather/velvet/lace
and damn, I'm beautiful
in my melancholic rages and drugged-up stupor
'cause who's gonna love me if I don't?

                                              Touch my heart; it's hard as gold.

The only kind of angel I can be
is the snow angel I make in the winter
but it doesn't snow in the city, we whisper, agitated
us gossiping girls huddled in someone's room
blowing smoke and talkin' 'bout Jesus
and laughing headily at people who find religion in a bowl of soup
and we've been reduced to nothing more
than hipbones and mascara and chipped nail polish:
we left our best selves on the cutting room floor.
        There's only us huddled together in the summer, and
there's only watermelon in the sweltering urban summer
staining your clothes with the heady pink blood and water;
yeah, those were the days of icy sweet starvation
when we huddled to gossip about recycled problems
in someone's bedroom
and tried to become silhouettes.
    I'd tell them about you between old movies on TMC
about that bizarre explosion of entanglement
that debilitating disease that forces our lips together
and how guilty I feel every time I say, "Not today"
or leave you behind-
...fuck it. I don't know why.
    I tried to paint you picture after picture of Kansas that summer:
the off-color song of the locusts
(incessant)
the weathered barn
the humid, cloying stillness
and the sickly cellophane clouds in yellow-green--
the eerie calm before the storm
made the prettiest picture
                        and I promise you, I tried.
But every time I tried to paint the eye of the storm
it was your eye
and damnit, you ruined everything
tilting my world like drunken trees in the permafrost
with make-up kisses like bitter strawberries
                                      [berry stains and a sinking feeling...]
I'm on fire
all my ligaments spouting poetry as our hands touch
playing the piano of my nerve endings
I don't want to make music with you, I want a drink
because I need to numb the budding musical notes
sprouting somewhere within the confines of my ribcage
              [I can't sing, but you make me
                  want to anyways.]
Nobody's forcing you to say and do these things.
nobody's cultivating
old feelings in new skin:
-I think maybe I could let you touch me, so we'll take it from there.

When you hug me, watch out for the jagged edges
since I've got more splinters than Band-aids
for the moment, and
I'm out of cash and ambition
searching aimlessly online and in cafes
for birds of a feather
someone whose life I can take in at a glance
and leave nothing of myself behind.
Always looking for something that I can't do with you.
     
          [hug me and watch it overflow
                    a hot thing a    red    thing
                    gaping, a hot thing:
                                            "I adore you."]

Can you fill that hollow muscle that I've reduced
to a mere scientific pump
with a kind of small magic?
It's 2 a.m. and I'm feeling the sugar rush
tossing on couches
trying to write about something other than you
or him/her/them
or the scorn in my family's eyes that is channeled into my mother's mouth
and write about something impersonal for once
like the girl on the 7:17 bus
with too much makeup and splintered hair
that caught the spun light and shifted eloquently
into the color of a tiger lily
a poem with no meaning for once
instead of these lines that mean too much;
lines that always, somehow, creep back to you
when all I really want is good wine
and a day to watch girls in short skirts
a day without commitment
where I can finally have some breathing room, begin to accept
that faint glimmer in the shadow of my insecurities
a hope that I might not destroy this after all
for all my unapologetic curses and clumsy fingers
all of those fights with the mirror
and with my past
and those strangers that inspire a brief tingle of lust
that disappears as soon as our eyes meet
                      (Christ, I know I'm ugly, but you don't have to gawk...)
fights with your whispers of beauty
admissions of passion
"I'm happy with you."
      When was the last time I allowed anything positive in my life?
Not for the longest time
and even though I never picked up a needle or a bottle cradled in brown paper
it was only because I couldn't put down my stubborn pride
or my shame, thick as mucus
and certainly not as pretty
and there are all my skeletons laid out in the open: solid, inflamed
refusing to crumble into dust
even though it was so long ago.
    Bones upon bones, flushed and brittle
your bones, my bones entwined
  And I know it’s probably not what we think it is
but we can call it that, if you like
desecrate it, dissect it, reduce it to everything on a greeting card
because I’m tired of fighting it
hiding behind my past to avoid your phone calls
using it to feel guilty every time you make me smile
so,  let’s not complicate this anymore.
Let’s take everything that matters away
so I don’t cry anymore
and neither do you.
    If we could just take away all the anger
the strained silences
the compromise, the reality of everything
we’d have all those cutesy romance novel moments
like stopped clocks and fresh-cut grass
that leave sickly sweet stains on our clothes and underneath our nails.
                                            [wouldn’t we make a great movie?]

The truth is, it’s all very forgettable and the critics would pan us because your looks aren’t movie-star and because I think that both stained glass windows in church and bathroom stalls are both appreciable means of communication with the unknown.

Keep kissing those rosary beads, mother.
It hasn’t done me any good yet.

                                          We stood on the crashing edge of a galaxy
                                          and on a crumbling precipice
                                                      that led to a violet ocean
                                                                                         
And I had a fleeting sense of how
tiny and feeble these
glowing pinpricks we call emotions truly are
            you held my hand and the brine tasted sweet on my lips.

We are wasting ourselves among vintage liquor and noir films
emptying the bottles and still chugging
searching for that last drop of nothingness
Let’s toast to our brittle spirits and new beginnings
then fuck while we watch Arsenic and Old Lace--
it's something to clear out the cobwebs
and that last doubt, dangling, swept away by the
rumbling of the cars
and fine touches at 3 a.m.
that fade into the ceaseless city background noise
and we wear our feeling on our sleeves for the first time,
those clumsy Crayola scribbles
that belie the languid affection with which we touch one another,
examine one another in the wash of the red-blue-green traffic lights:
my scars, my stomach
your scabbed knees, your sunburn
there’s no way to hide these things from one another
but we forgive them in exchange for quiet conversation and awkward kisses
we’re not unique
we’re not shit
we just ARE;
we’re lazy like Japanese fish, swimming slowly
picking each other’s bones clean to see the intentions that pulse beneath
    (you’re not like them, are you?)
and this time, you mean it.
It’s not, “Who can I trust not to hurt me?”, it’s “Who can I trust not to hurt me on purpose?”, and even that’s not so much the question as, “Do I have the patience for that?”
 
    Not for shallow apologies that pepper my eardrums
    So never say you’re sorry.
        Just hold me.

It’s a Friday night and we’re at the disco
writhing bodies simulating sexsexfreedomsex
and tonight I’m falling into the whole world’s embrace
wanna join me?
And I know I’m gonna
hate myself in the morning
but fuck you, right now, I’m beautiful
and when we stumble home at 3 a.m. during a rainstorm
the thunder is a song and the rain tastes like wine
heady with the lingering scent of the cornfields and inspiration
I left behind for you;
the sickly green rainstorms on the heels of
calm summer breezes that ruffle bed sheets--
                    see the poetry I gave up for you?

[There's nothing I wouldn't give up for you that you wouldn't give up for me.]

I curl up on my friends' beds, night after night
eating leftover Halloween candy and watching Moulin Rouge

                                            We hold hands.
                                            We talk.
                                            We laugh.
                                            I never once mention you.
                                            (I think I want to.)

And there we are, us girls huddled together
laughing at someone new in the dark
finding a kind of balance between Fiona, who's a Catholic, and me, who doesn't believe in God;
just what I can feel
like lips, tits, and hips
or that certain thing I can see in the color of your eyes
or that aching thickness in the back of my throat
whenever you don't say you miss me;
that's my bad religion
all concrete, no faith.
          But dear JesusAllahBuddha help me
I might not be walking blind this time
and here we are, laying on someone's roof
belly to belly, breast to breast
trembling for karma
for communion
for the blood and tears upon my lips
Ganesh who smells of jasmine
Shive who radiates incense and says OM
dance for me
shake and quiver to the erratic pulse beneath my chest
but whatever you do, please don't cry for me
I've done enough of that on firefly porches beneath the wet moon
and between old movies on TMC.
  But what I never told them was that
when you kissed my fingertips and held me for a moment,
I thought I could understand why
when Arthur fell from his horse, he whispered,
"Dear God, Guinevere..." 

ii.
It's like when you're with them, and you're talking
really-really-really fast, lost in the blur
like a phone disconnected, and then all of a sudden you
stop
because you finally looked and saw
how beautiful that smile really was.
        And when they leave you, you cry;
not because it's what's expected of you,
but because you mean it.
    When I'm with you, I am

exposed

and there's something so beautiful about that;
about you.