After You've Left

When I was a baby,
our apartment complex caught fire.
They say I slept through everything,
flames and sirens and all of our belongings
being reduced to ash.

As an adult, I have lost this talent.
If I marry you, I will sew Orion
into my dress. I can't figure out
what you want.

Fine, give me this
failure. I would like to live
without the barricades.
Invent colors and assign them
human names.

This is where it begins
to get difficult again.
You look for me without words,
voice. I will not wear white,
I will not ask you to change.

I was born to turn into flame.
I am hard to look at, I know this.
A man is flying here to see if I still light up
the world. Do you know how far
Texas is from Massachusetts?

I can't force it to matter,
can't spark on command.
In my driveway, clumsy.
At the bottom of the stairs,
clumsier still.

You're the only one
I think about.

222. February 16th

You, who cannot fall
asleep with anything around your wrist,

Who are you
to tell any man that he should not be
an island?

221. Celestial Beings

You speak to him
with stars in your mouth
and nothing happens
in the right order.
The days you wear poppies 
and nobody wants to kiss your neck.
The days you douse yourself in fire 
and too many people 
want to know your name.

Oh, the things you would beg to do
to his body. If anyone could challenge 
the pull of the moon
it would be you and your hips.
But there will be no novas
erupting on your tongue 
tonight. You are darkness
and you are light. You are terrified
and you are terrifying.

You are better than this.
You were supposed to be better than this.
The sky begins to fall on your shoulders
and he wants to know why
you are blinking, 
why you would not want
to see all of it
as it happens.

220. Love Poem

Once, in high school,
someone told me that suicides
go straight to purgatory.
I gave her a black eye
because
if there is a heaven
it was made
for people like you.

219. Harvest

I've decided to stop watering
the vegetables in the garden.
You haven't eaten in weeks.
What more could I possibly do?
I am writing speeches
about how we should move
to the orchard or Kansas or
the middle of wine country.
I'd like to see us flourish.
Perhaps I should shout
and not whisper.
You treat the cabbage like it's yours,
and the tomatoes as though
you don't have to work for them.
The peppers told me
they are disappointed. I didn't have
an excuse for you.
I'm hungry. Waiting for sweetness
to follow.

218. Battalion

Next month,
it will have been ten years
since I tried to kill myself.
It took me eight to begin
treating birthdays
as celebrations.

Now I wear dresses
for every occasion I can and smell
like soft marshmallows
and sparks.

There are so many things
I would not have gotten to love.
Good and bad.
I don't know if I'm any better
at this, but I can stand
near the kitchen drawers
without temptation.

That has to be something.

217. Retraction

I am interested in the way beings produce light
and where they choose to reflect it.
Then there's you, my sugar-wolf,
devour being your verb
of choice. And it's always choice,
isn't it?

You do not want to be your parents,
your brothers. I do not want to be the person
that wastes away while you figure out how
to forgive them. Or the invisible blood
that makes you run
from your body.

I think your skin is beautiful.
All the places you've been, and I will argue
that you smell like you've been dusted in heaven.
Even after you've covered me in teeth marks.

You don't always have to play
the villain or the coward. I can only say please
so many times before my tongue
falls out. A person gets tired. There is so much more
to you than this.