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| untitled (infatuation poem)
I know you are merely inches from me
but these days
inches are expansive wastelands
and I wonder if
you look at me across the distance
the same way I look at you
squinting
wishing
(I am imagining a day when you begin a steady walk towards me)
oh, I would meet you halfway
oh, do you, too,
imagine a day
when we would stand together close enough
for our fingertips to brush
and that one touch
would be a catalyst
but this loneliness isolates
and this distance misrepresents us
turning cautiously expressed curiosity in my eyes
into sadly discovered ambivalence in yours.
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| The Refugee Comes Home (And Home is a Lovely Place)
I wanted you to know
the feeling inside my eyes when I am crying,
and the feeling inside my bones when I am running away,
and how these feelings are poor imitations of the feeling inside my being
when you said goodbye.
I wanted you to hear yourself, then--
the way your voice was confident, polite, terrible--
hear yourself the way I could hear you
as if your every word
was the pound of a gavel
and your sentences:
you sentenced me to loneliness
you sentenced me to temporary solemnity, which is a result of numbness--
and you sentenced me to the gallows...
but there are some things you have no authority to conclude.
I wanted you to watch my eyes
as your decisions grew monstrously large
and pushed me up the wide steps of a building
and out, into the open air,
where I could only look down at the tiny simple world below and wish...
I leaned over the edge of that building, wishing, wishing,
and I saw a gray world, busy people, dirty streets,
and I saw a low place where rain had fallen--
and the puddle was mimicking the sky--
and I leaned over farther and saw the top of a building
and saw two emulated eyes
reflecting my loneliness in the sky
within that tiny simple world.
And only for a moment, I wanted you
to recognize the change in my eyes
see how they opened wide
as if they recognized an old friend
in that tiny simple world.
See how they became calm,
like reflective pools of rain, and listened
as the old friend
told a secret I once knew
but could not remember
because the secret had tumbled from the top of a high building
and had been held captive in a rain puddle.
This secret was about my stolen importance
and it was
so filled with beauty and truth
that could not be denied.
And this is why
I stopped wanting you
when I found my reflective self--forgotten,
held, a sane prisoner in the asylum of my conscious mind,
a continual casualty of forgetfulness and sorrow--
and I reclaimed this self as mine.
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| Dear Someone,
I want you so badly
you, grinning into the light
you, with a voice like the rumble of thunder at a distance
you, frozen at a boundary I constructed between us
you, infinitely wise
open me up
like an envelope
and take out what is inside
and know that each imperfect stanza
inside the envelope of my existence
is a celebration of survival
this poetry is primal
and I want you
so badly
to understand it
and to bless me.
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| Thin-Skinned
I do remember
snapping eyelids open to greet the day
and your figure was imprinted within
the sunlight gently filtering through an open window.
You were so much
and so much larger than I--
my body was unaccustomed to feeling
fragile, tiny, and windblown--like the seed of a dandelion.
You caught some of these seeds
in your wide callused palm
when we sat by the river, or
when the river ran past us, like the hot tracks of a tear.
I do remember being
caught in those palms, my body exposed--
a vessel for secrets, sent flying into the elements:
the wind blowing, the earth, the river of tears.
It was those rough palms that threw me,
and I do remember your thick voice
that resembled so closely the gurgling of a brook
when you told me to grow, grow, grow....
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| The "It's a Good Thing You Cannot Die From Being Too Earnest" Poem
I'm sorry that I couldn't tell you
three years ago
that my face would be a curtain drawn
and that you'd have to tug at my strings
to unravel truth from my well-intentioned deception.
(I was just trying
not to hurt myself on sharp glass
because the windowpane behind this curtain
is cracked and glittering with trepidation, you see).
You could have made yourself a necklace
of woven wildflowers
if you just climbed through my window
to waltz in that fearless way of yours
in the bright sun that paints my empire of cowardice
filtering through
this curtain of still silk--
and I know you could see it! I know you could see
the glow of my contradiction behind diaphanous eyes
and I know you're not afraid of cut glass
(but your Reason was always a frightened ghost
in the face of my radiating Love)
and you never bled for me
and you never pushed past calm silk
and you never unraveled this secret with rough warmth, so
I tied myself in string and sold myself downstream
and I do reminisce about who I used to be
before I was bought like an animal,
and worked for Passions I had never discovered before
but now, in the quiet twilight, my warm body
is naked and pure under somebody else's sheets
and being a slave and being a queen
never appeared so similar to me
I am so sorry
because I could not recognize you for the animal you were
in the same way you did not know me
for the woman I would become
and I feel as though we are partners in a crime: heartbreak.
And I am so sorry
but this is to say
our days of flirting with silk and secrets
our days of empty happiness and empty truths
were split at the seams with a sound like screeching tires
and I was flung forward and I began to cry, but
today is new, and
today I sit like a happy captive, for I tell no truths
without feeling the weight of each one in my heart
so heavy, like a stone
that could break the glass of a window
that could rustle the dusty silk of a curtain
that could wake me from a sound sleep
in this twilight of my young soul
I'll be naked, and my eyes will shine brighter than ever
and I'll be trembling with the promise of uncovered secrets
and warm insistent love.
And I'll roll over in somebody else's sheets,
closer
to a warm new life.
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