I’m not one to gnaw my fingernails, but I get the curb appeal of a harmful habit. I never picked up cigarettes or floored it in my car just to see what a hundred miles per hour feels like. Lifetime, I’ve bought two lottery scratchers, and neither gave me a dime or a thrill.

No, none of these are my vices. My flesh has found another pathway entirely to turning in on itself.

I keep, in romantic detail, account of everything I’ve ever lived through. The first kiss on an orange couch, the searing abruptness of harsh words on a subway platform. The shock, somatic, of a rolled ankle pulling me to concrete. The hollow disappointment of people who hugged me hello two weeks ago willfully averting their eyes at the dance hall.

It’s a writer’s impulse, I tell myself. But then I walk with my lover on a sunny afternoon, and a memory rinses over me in vivid color. And there I am, telling it, recounting some bruising bit of history, and his eyes fall, downcast.

Why did I tell that story?

Life has granted me my wisdoms, one of them being that anybody who causes me harm is probably busy warding off hellhounds all their own. I’m wise enough to know I shouldn’t clench my firsts around anger, so I wrench them loose, let things free.

Yet remembering is time travel. Reliving those pages, even the yellowed ones, scrapes these scars raw. And, all over again, I am indignant, bruised, yearning, wanting.

All around me, the world seems to usher itself right along. The noodle shop on 53rd Street becomes a deli, the new tenants next door proudly proclaiming it their bodega. New albums hit the radio, and I’m obsessing over a track from 2014, my throat catching, remembering how it coaxed me to run when my body felt like buckling.

–

It’s summer in New York City, and I’d never admit it to you, but my spirit is a dishtowel, worn. I am waterlogged, wrung out, and haphazardly hung to dry. I am contorted, rigid in both my aching and my denial. I have become fluent in the language of insisting.

I’m really all right, I say, impressing tableside company. I know exactly what I’m doing.

At Fire Island, a man who waged war to bring me back ignores me all day. I don bright sunglasses and a pink coat, invincible in my indifference. I read a book by the pool and bask in the magic of place. Night falls, and we see a drag performer, a dynamo. She spins on her heels, black lights and neon, and we roar. We leave to go dancing, feeling young and infinite. Vodka soda with a splash of cran. Everything, gently rinsed in burgundy.

I turn and see him, passionately kissing someone new. I pour half of my drink between my lips, swallowing daggers as I do. I’ve been here before, I insist, it only hurts if I let it. I inhale and exhale, long, dancing among boys who are watching me for signs of distress. It hurts, so I rinse my tongue in fizz and bite. I toss the plastic cup and decide to walk home, night sky and boardwalk planks.

When I get home, I say very little, brushing my teeth the recommended three minutes. I crawl into bed, finally alone and unwatched, and I sob into a pillow. Before I know it, sleep has pulled me under. I hear none of the pool party happening outside. Hours of moonlight missed.

Light stirs me awake, and I see that it’s 5:30 in the morning. I turn, discovering he never came home. Anxiety jolts through my body like lightning, pulling me to my feet. This is a violation, and I am sliced right open. I fumble with my phone, uncertain of where to start. I walk to the bathroom, catch my face in the mirror, and I point an index finger at myself: You fucking idiot. You stupid, stupid boy.

Disgusted, I walk outside to the patio. The air feels warm, heavy with rumors of last night’s misadventures, and I am solitary in my waking. Restless, I decide on a course of action: I’m going to sit in the hot tub, eyes closed, and listen to august by Taylor Swift.

As the song starts, however, I see figures stir in my periphery. My boyfriend, naked, walking up the steps to our rental, and the bar guy, pulling on clothes and exiting through the greenery. The details are irrelevant now; I keep my eyes shut and shift my focus toward the water bubbling against my shoulder blades.

I feel a palm clasp against my shoulder, and I startle. He is here, and his eyes meeting my eyes breaks me. I collapse immediately into sobs. Come to bed, he says.

You didn’t come home, I stammer. My tears sting hot, my pride in shreds around me. I can’t believe that.

He insists I come back up; I ask for some time. He leaves, and I wait there, broken. At some point, I climb out, pat dry, replace the hot tub cover, climb the steps, slip quietly back into that room.

–

I humbly ask: What good does this story bring me?

When I relive it, I ache. I am embarrassed for myself, sad that this wasn’t the chapter that led me to break free and run ’til my lungs fucking burned. Against my sternum, I feel anger bloom for a man who hasn’t touched me in years, which quickly gives way to sadness. I did not cure his loneliness, and I barely survived the attempt.

The details proliferate. This is one of a hundred stories I carry around, indexed to this love and its bruises. I know the next story is a birthday fight, one where I anxiously pick my first manicure loose, leaving shreds of aquamarine against the boards. I know this crushing affair ends in a Chinese restaurant, where my hand is brutally held to the stove for the thousands ways I come up short. That, after the crush of goodbye, he invites me into a limp hug, and this anticlimax is the perfect ending. I know that I don’t shed a single tear after he leaves, and that this is because his presence was where my all my heartbreak was housed.

Sometimes, I convince myself that holding these stories grants my writing a more vivid palette. That, because I have known emotions like these firsthand, mine is a company marked by deeper compassion, reluctant judgment. I wonder if, by sharing, I open the gate for someone else to feel less alone in their own story.

Other times I wonder if I’ve grown far too fond of these bruises, war wounds aching with the change of the weather. Does my poetry live and die on the freshness of my pain? If not for the crush of living and wanting and the narrow survival, what story do I really have to share?

I hope there is hope. I insist that there is, underline it in adamant red, but I am like the other ministers: The songs I sing most convincingly are the ones I need the most.

but February was never endless,
the held breath shaky
in the cavernous wait,
our pupils opening like
church doors at the
lavender of morning,
we were tender when
we were outlasting,
weren’t we?

Remember the first
Pittsburgh morning, jostled
you from the dark to
bear witness to my breaking,
spilling myself across the page
between chapters, and
again in Manchester I shook you
to steal another hour together,
overlap our limbs and revel
in some nonsensical hour,
the knowing came quiet
and ridiculed all the
thunderstorm romances before.

If I’ve loved you, I have
the perfect story of your joy,
can light you up in the minds
of strangers–beautiful, ephemeral,
human–I dutifully usher a sparkle
of delight, a swell of pain, lovely,
by habit fastidious keeper, hoarding
every detail of anybody who
made one of these days worthwhile,
flowering constantly in the rain, wind,
and fire of all these nights and
their constant surrender to morning.

Dublin pulls on like
beloved gloves I’d forgotten
I lost, familiar, warm,
wandering into the grocery
and pondering the produce
like a man who owes
this city rent, how to
explain this hobby? Trying
on lives and delighting
in the momentary infinite,
grinning in make-believe
connection toward the
woman who allows my
cutting her in line, o
neighbor, my sister!

Sad if true, I am always
homesick for somewhere,
for cornfield summers, for a
campus emblazoned in
autumn’s yearning goodbyes,
the hard-earned scrape of
New York fucking City,
homesick for the dog who
died without one more
forehead whisper, for the
bruises of lovers who
drenched my poetry in
somatic wounds, dilation
of pupils under the pink-lit
glow of fever, forever,

goddamn it, I

find euphoria in the
stacking of worlds, hoarded
memory wedged between
homes I’ve pretended
were mine, jerk off
before bed and kiss
my palm goodnight,
even the grief tastes like
glory spread across lives
like these, my wandering
wants, aid and abet,
drifting loose as the
dream we fight to pinpoint.

I remember those days in
visceral red, blood pearls
surfacing, the startle
of skin interrupted, recall
my feet hammering the
stairwells as I chased you
toward shrieking trains,
sun-soaked parties, the
constant wanting of skin,
pills in our palms, a ritual,
salud!

You liked to split our meals
by halves, so I split myself
accordingly, asking for less,
wanting less, needing
nothing, scraping my knuckles
bloody to prove myself a
good sport, long walk home,
alone, measuring my hurt
in avenues, waiting
for your reach
to quell the indigo bruising.

Glances of pity from
two boys splitting pita, your
fury a sharp-edged thing, only
later would I discover
all my poems of you featured
glass, in prisms and prison,
I could not stop you until
I sobbed, broken, finally.

Ah, those days are over, places
so far out of reach, it’s
been years, and time
peeled the scabs free,
but I go on remembering,
you the hurricane, collision,
moonlight dancer winking
just before you leave
me to want in the dark.

I want for the crackle
of backyard fire, the spilling racket
of amber into the wanting
mouths of glass mugs, the
clink of company, the
way friends exhale when
geographies subside, how
time stretches itself out,
hound sighing softly against
the well-worn rug.

One day, I whisper, we
will be old men grown bored
of all our answers, craving
the very questions that
weary us now, pull us
awake in wonder, keep
us hungry for breath, we
should be savoring the
pens wobbling, desperate
for the page, in our
shaking hands.

Remember the year you
made home of the treetops?
Decades of cave dwelling
and your eyes flooded
the moment you drank
the sunset in the air
of some canopy. I was
there, watching in
wonder before either
of us knew how to walk
such a skyscape, remember
the thunder and how it
drowned in our laughter?
Remember?

Cat prints in the concrete, I
stop and marvel, joy in
tiny thunders, accidental
permanence achieved
unawares, the air so
frigid but magic so
warm it’s worth unburying
rosy knuckles for the photo.

My hope is a matchstick
trembling in hurricane days, I
harbor it fiercely, when my
laughter breaks free, I
forget the way the
television set got them
addicted to their anger, the
red hat hatred, the
bellowing yelp insisting
‘it must be their fault
my dreams died in my
wanting arms,’ I revel in
the revolution of belting
Celine Dion in a sea of men
who grew up afraid to speak
above a whisper, we will
hear the death rattle
to this wrathful cacophony,
will be dancing still.

How do I ensure
my life remains a love letter
to hope and not fury?
Fumbling fingers, I
practice my penmanship,
community, gratitude, joy,
belonging, light, we
can always start the
song again, we.

The mall is America, is
a liminal space, is a graveyard
who has no idea everything
she holds has died, and
the stores soldier on, unawares,
paint chips carving makeshift
geographies over the merchandise,
defaulted promises on the
premises, everything must go,
a pizza shop pretends not to
notice his neighbors have
died and gone, his whistling
echoes long into the empty arcade.

My family dog is an
old man now, I lie on the
carpet beside him, cradling
his face in one hand and
running the other along his
trembling ribcage, I
cannot make him young
so I try to remind him somehow
of his mother.

Inescapable, time, but
lovely is the stillness, if
we let it, if we dare
give it the room, let
it settle over us and
settle our debts and doings,
notice, really notice, the
minutes running their hands
across our tender bodies.

At the gas station, fathers
whose knuckles bear scars
from years on a factory floor
scratch tickets, hope momentarily
awash in bleak fluorescence,
flashes of soft sand beaches
or red-chrome freedom or
something to hand their
sons before the anchor
drowns them, too –

You know what really
trickles down?

When she degrades
her own body, pushing her
plate away and cutting
herself apart in harshness,
jokes and complaints
piling up in the gaze of
her daughter, discovering
and pinching her little
stomach in wilting privacy;

or he toils, for years,
at a job that breaks him
of dreaming, drowning
the day’s weight in
pop-tab beer, amber
medicine, seething
in violet rage at the
notion that an
immigrant might dream,
might want, too;

or their concept of
god, who is perhaps said
to love, but whose most
clamorous devotees
revel in the anguish of
the oppressed, recoil
from the image of
a kiss between men,
make excuses for
brutish, stupid men
and their brutish,
stupid messes.

I plead guilty, his epitaph by the
hundred in my handwriting,
memory saltwater gargled
in the name of healing, but
I welcome the visceral sting,
cinematic flashback to
all his wanton brutalities –

Sobbing in a hot tub, finally
broken, unruly horse accepting
the limits imposed by cruel
fingertips, the sinking, cooling
epiphany, alone and disposable,
sexual revolution a skin-broken lie:
I waited, pleasant fool, for
the long-promised amory.

If I let myself remember
the roll of an ankle, I squirm
in my chair, instinctive
recoil, so perusing the
pages I penned in your
name makes me pine to
chain you to a chair,
listen and know the
weight of your
unbearable loneliness,
empty ache of your
counterfeit care.

So many miles
between me and the
days I welcomed the bruise
of your company, but
I remember, the poet’s
curse, the tongue always
travels to the tooth’s
jagged edge, so I
write and rinse and spit.

It’s so simple, the art
of romanticizing bruises,
excavating the wounds
left behind by lovers reckless,
far easier to describe the
mammalian thrill of the
concept of red when my
bedroom floor still litters
with bandages desperately
pressed against my body
and discarded in vain –

Fireworks in the dilating
pupils, some man learned
in the forbidden magic of
staring into the soul while he
lies tells me he loves me,
symphonies for the sidewalk
shootout, what is love, after all,
if not clinging through the
hurricane?

Far harder, admittedly,
to rile a poem’s bloodstream
with the details of love
steady, sustainable –
you meet me at the
airport, just past where
you’re supposed to, and
we both break into a
jog; I call you on a
Saturday, on speaker
while we both pretend
to be in the same room;
I wipe three dots
of your pee from
the toiletseat and don’t
tell you so; in the
morning, you detail
your dreams while they
evaporate; you pretend
not to remember I said
we’d cook tonight,

and would a reader stay?
Is this a poem anyone
wants, flesh cradled in lieu of
breaking? When the stanzas
don’t thrill, instead becoming
a gentle landing?

I love you as something
mundane and lovely, spoken
despite all our knowing, the
squeeze of a hand, the secret
grin at a small snore, handing
you the last sip of coffee
even though I wanted it.