Translation is Key

I’m a fucking parasite-
and while I want you to stick around
so I can use your blood
as an excuse to stay alive,

I more than anything just
want you to save yourself.

Nothing really matters.
I could walk outside and lay in the dirt
and let the woods become my grave
and at first you would be filled with fear

because what could you do?
Nothing.

But eventually you would move on
and live again,
the same as you had
before, during, and after
the tragedy that was me.  

I love you,
but I’m a fucking parasite.
You don’t have to love me, too. 

A Love Letter To Alan Ruck

You don’t know me. 
If I am in love with you, so what?

But still,
I feel compelled to write to you
and tell you that I save snapshots of you
and that the thought of you
makes it easier for me to fall asleep.

I like to think you are a good hand holder
and that you’d put in just the right amount of sugar
when you made iced tea.
I like to think about you naked, too,

but that’s for another letter
some other night.

I’m a sad seventeen-year-old
who writes this kind of poetry
to convince herself it’s alright to be depressed,
even after spring has sprung
and flowers are blooming
and to everyone else it seems alright to be alive.

“I’m in love with Alan Ruck,” 
I tell myself because
you can’t say you don’t love me back.

I don’t know you well enough to say that sort of thing.
You are just a figure head,
standing in as the poster boy for my heart break
while I look for someone closer by
to cast my line towards.

Until then,
I am eternally yours. 

Prom

I’m sure that you will be stunning
and he will lay out with you under the stars,
getting grass stains in your beautiful gown
and spilling ink on your memories
the shape and size of his kisses.

You don’t know how beautiful you are
but for when he runs his fingertips
across the apple of your cheek
and picks it gingerly from your branches-

in that moment, you are everywhere.
You are stardust and dinosaur teeth.
You are the pages of a history book.

I will never know that feeling.
I will sit at home, alone with a book
and some tea and channel surf
to see if there is something good
on TV 

but you will be stunning. 

He wore sensible clothes. He was a sensible man. He cut coupons and only crossed the street when the sign said WALK. He had big wire framed glasses that made his eyes look huge. He watched everything with those bug eyes of his. 

He was in love, which wasn’t very sensible. 

She had red hair and dressed like Annie Hall and she always took her lunch break at a small cafe across the street from the record store across the street from where she worked. He loved to watch time stop every time she crossed the street (most times without looking both ways). 

In the middle of April, while the clouds were hanging heavy with rain that hadn’t fallen yet, he crossed the street to talk to her, his hands in his pockets and his eyes trained on his shoes. 

“Hello.” 

The first syllable was a jump into the abyss. She looked up from her sandwich and smiled at him. At first she squinted, recognition not dawning on her for a few moments. Then she smiled. “Oh, hey. Hall and Oates.” 

She remembered him from the first record he bought at her store. 

A waiter walked by and filled her glass to the brim, just in passing. Here and gone in a flash with no evidence of his presence but a few ounces of Diet Pepsi. 

“Hello.” He repeated himself, swallowing hard. “I wanted to tell you, in case it interested you, that I never used to shop for vinyl. I have a- a- a very strict budget and a very rigid routine that I do not usually stray from, but the day I heard you singing Blackbird, a lot in my life changed.” He swallowed again. “I am a sensible man. I do research before I buy shoes.” She laughed softly at that, and that encouraged him to go on. “But you inspire something different in me. I have spent every afternoon browsing records in your store because I like the way that feels. 

“I think I love you. And it’s ok if you don’t love me back. I’m used to that. You really don’t have to give me anything in return. I have a very small, careful heart. It just wanted me to tell you, the first woman I have loved in a long time, exactly how I feel.” 

She frowned at him, considering her words carefully, chewing her sandwich and the information he had just divulged between her molars. “Thanks, Hall and Oates,” she said very softly. “Music can do that to even the most careful of hearts.” 

“Yes, yes…” He looked back and forth down the street. Then a few raindrops fell. One landed on the bridge of his nose. “I just thought you should know.” 

He was a sensible man who had forgotten his umbrella. 

I’m not sorry for the way I love you
except that I could use some sleep.

I don’t want to sit up
waiting at my window for you
while the wild wind blows
and my heart slowly breaks.

I don’t want the shallow sleep of a girl
waiting for something to happen
that actually never will.  

The Circle of Life

I wrote you a poem,
but I’m not sure if you’ll ever read it,
so instead
the stanzas are the meat on my ribs
and the floss in my teeth.

I am a silent disaster and a public misfit;
you are sidewalk chalk- 
the invisible melanoma
on my conscience.  

I play Mother, May I? 
and use memories as stepping stones,
leading their way downstairs
to my destruction.
You remind me of autumn leaves
and rejuvenation-

These cycles do me no good.
I end up just where I started:
a thumb in my mouth
and a chip on my shoulder.  

When we used to fight, the blood that would cover me was never yours. 

It was always a blood bath, me cleansing myself in rivers of crimson that flowed from my own veins. And you ran away, making no apologies. 

I would hope every time you left to buy cigarettes that you would turn int the old cliche and never come back, leaving me with a closet full of shirts that still smelled like you and seemed to hold your shape. 

When you left, it was with as much romance as you came. A cigarette hanging haphazardly from your lips, you nodded to me and picked up the box that you had packed.

“It was nice knowing you, babe.” And you walked away.

Now I remember what it feels like to breathe easy.  

Thunder

You remind me of lightning
and the smell of the dirt
when the rain lands in the grass -

you are a great big something
that will always kind of scare me
in a way I can’t explain

because I love it.

You remind me of rain puddles
and kicking through them
and getting my sneakers wet.

You remind me of taking showers
to wash off the rain
even though I’m already wet.

You remind me
of being in love with raindrops
and clothes sticking to my skin.

I’ve always loved summer storms.

Favor

You would never make me tell you that I love you
but I keep on dragging the words up and out of obscurity
so that I can embarrass myself

while you never have to break a sweat.

I would never ask you to give me anything
that you wouldn’t sacrifice willingly
but if you would love me, I’d be grateful

and I would never forget the gallons of gas you spent on me
or the times you let me wear your coat because I was cold
and you were kind.

I want to sleep with you and seriously dream. 
I want to smoke with you, but not go up in flames.

I want to keep this good thing going
without scaring you away.  

Phil

When I asked you to stop shaving, 
you grew a mustache and we named it Phil.

It tickled my lip when you kissed me
and you pulled on the ends when you listened to me
tell you the stories about my day

and even when you complained about it itching
you still hid the razor and the shaving cream

because I asked you to stop shaving
and while you tamed that woolly mammoth
I painted you with watercolors and 
promises of fellatio that 
I always fulfilled. 

When I asked you to stop shaving,
we talked about old Civil War generals 
with their old fashioned goatees

but decided that your boss might not
find it as funny if you waxed your new mustache
so that it smiled at him while you finished spreadsheets  

or if you connected your sideburns 
and the caterpillar on your lip.

When I asked you to stop shaving,
you laughed because you thought I was joking
but now we’re a nice little family:

Me, You, & Phil.