More than once, it’s happened:
I tell someone I have a cat, and they’ve told me,
You know, if you die in your apartment,
your cat will eat your face?

And, what an image, I’ve mused, what
a curious share!

What is it, I wonder, that causes
someone to want me to know
some small love in my life is imagined,
or makes them comfortable
painting a picture of me dying,
alone and unsupervised, my cat’s
pink nose sniffing my figure
writhing on the tile?

And, listen, it usually seems to
boil down to something un-malicious –
some passionate, misguided argument
on behalf of the dog, who would
certainly not eat my face, very
unlike the orange cat purring
on my chest while I answer all
my morning emails.

Headphones in, I
decipher poetry on a
downhill San Diego hike,
new melodies for old
wounds, the white gravel
crunching and shuffling
underfoot as I meander
to a borrowed room on
a coast I pretend, for today,
is home.

What would my life be like
here, I muse, and I know:
I would ache for everywhere
I’ve ever lived, but
the minute I booked a flight
anywhere else, I
wouldn’t want to go.

If you master the craft
of making home wherever
you wander, you will
never be lost and
you will always be
missing something,
someone, somewhere –

The sun-drenched earth
of Indiana summers, cornfields
swaying en route to
backyard barbecues, the
bustle of Muncie in August,
backpacked walkers groggy
every morning, lost in the
sprawl of some Manhattan,
charmed by the glimmer
of Astoria trains tearing
by overhead.

My poems cannot decide
whether I’m grieving or
grateful, and I keep room
for both, and every home,
and every wound, my
scars and stories
two sides of the same
visceral wanting, the
skin-scrape of hope
and healing and hurt,
and I am home, here again,
I am home.

What about another vacation, he
said, and we all knew better
but we did it anyway, took
a half day and a rental car
to the great upstate, hollow
pit in my stomach as we
kicked back, Reyes y Cobardes,
no subtlety in the symbolism, and
we all did it anyway.

The bone was strained a
hundred times before, empty
nights and lonely meals together,
fights where I scraped my
nails manicured pink and green
into debris on the saltwater boards,
you rum punch confessed I
wasn’t a factor, a bruise I
tried to swallow for days,
but still the bone did not snap.

That night, at some dinner, on
some manicured lawn in some
Tarrytown dream, he picked
a fight, and my guts fell to
ribbons as I plunged, sweaty
palms, trapeze jump, and
I reached for you, eyes
blank and unfeeling as you
watched
me

fall,
snap, the tragic crushing,
soft heart tissue against the
pavement, and you watched
as I writhed in the realization
and you watched.

He took so many swings, left
cruel marks in the wake of his
loving, but it was
you
who bruised a gentle boy
into hues unshakably blue,
unblinking, not sorry,
inspecting the aftermath with
detached curiosity.

I knew better than to hope in you
but I still did it anyway,
now I know knowing sucks no sting
from the fall, will never forget
the apathy in your eyes
as I fell, your hands clasped
in boredom, away from my reach.

A boy told me once
I would die on any hill –
and, though I knew he
fought not from a loving
vantage point, I wrestled
with this ghost, these
phantom accusations,
long after he’d gone.

When I see him now, he is
blurry, can’t remember a
line of his face or the
dark look in his eye, and
I know this is survival,
strong-willed erasure,
pushing him to the periphery,
a footnote, a forgotten scar.

A compassionate heart is prone
to forgiveness, so I armor
mine with a mind unforgetting –
in sharp detail, the way he’d
leave bruises over macarons or
ketchup packets, bite my hand
for talking to him and then for
using my phone instead, kick my
ribs for taking him to a diner I
loved because he didn’t,
what a cruel and lonely lover
handing out cruel and
lonely love.

Exhale the anger and indignation,
everything comes out like smoke,
my body a housefire, and
time smoldered fury to ashes, I
pressed up on my eaves, relenting,
there have been so many
gentle rains since, so much
ivy crawling up what was gray.

I don’t long to die on any hill, I
long to live on one, to
plant my feet and reach outward,
pull someone up and make
a home of this world, where
what is beautiful outlasts what
leaves scar tissue, where
we see something soft and
protect it fiercely from reckless hands.

Every man I’ve loved
is either a car crash or a
hurricane –

I could whisper which
is which, but the
results were the same:
whiplash, shattered windows,
splintered palms, grab
all I can carry and get the fuck
out, board up the windows,
hide out in the hope
my pen might just heal me.

I have stopped zero crashes,
convinced zero hurricanes to
calm themselves into some
summer breeze, and

crunched numbers and
bruises withstanding, I’ve not
wasted an ounce of my
love, unearthed magic in
my wounds’ animal edges,
my spirit a constant
gardener, tendering and
tamping hope into the earth.

I may need to cancel, I sigh, there’s
homework, there’s a messy apartment,
and you tell me it’s cool, you’ll work
too, and for hours, we do,
headphones in, laptops up,
awash in lamplight and the
wild notion that my company’s
worth wanting even on
nights like this one.

Hop a Wednesday train to see you
at work, and it’s busy, we can’t
say much, but you light up
when I wander in, and
the journey’s worthwhile,
text dumb jokes your way on
the way back home.

I make dinner and you snap
a photo before eating, unknowingly
rinsing a wound left by some man
you’ve never met, and,
forgotten ingredient, you
run out, twice, swear that
you’re happy to do it,
and we settle in and watch
comfort TV and your
laughter fills the room.

I’m so glad that you’re here, now,
though I’m hesitant to name it,
still recoiling from scars and
the idea I must’ve earned them,
look up and your face is a sea
of stars, smiling, touching,
and it’s easy, finally easy,
to exhale.

The days stack up like
dirty plates, countertop tower
unwieldy, keep my hands gentle
or face the tumbling crash,
so many of my poems about
you were about broken glass,
an omen I willfully ignored,
and I still can’t get the taste
out of my mouth –

There are spots in the city I
still find it hard to breathe,
there on 14th Street, where
you yelled at me until I broke,
the story that traveled the
world, Michael lost
his cool, down the subway
steps, where you told me
in a voice I can’t unhear
I am impossible to love.

Old wounds have a way of aching
with the weather, some
glasses spilling shards only
flesh can find, you
transparent, fragile thing,
but I’ll tell you, I know it:

I know my love is a sun
breaking through the
cloud cover, watched it
warm you to the bone,
keep you company and starve
your constant loneliness, I know
you ache for it, and
can’t bring myself
to light even a corner of
the rooms you run to,
drug-numbed and desperate.

I’d say it’s all love, but
it isn’t, it wasn’t, so I
play sweet music at the
kitchen sink, hum along as
I rinse old things free,
toss away the splinters that
make themselves known, and
close my eyes, let myself
conjure your face, the one you
made in those rare moments I
had you, and wish you
someone possible.

By the sun, I know time has swept
new flesh across forgotten wounds,
but a poet is unpracticed in the art
of forgetting, all the stories somatic,
memory staining its way through
the armor, gossamer, painting
the bones crimson, indigo, so

I turn down my headphones,
think of the things I didn’t
have the nerve to say
when I was surviving you,
the loneliest boy with the
sharpest bite, I hope that
the God you run from is
kinder than the one who
taught you to love, and

Still I hope
you will find your way,
free from the shrieking
silence of your own company, I
walk through a new city and watch
black and indigo press like ink into
the orange sky, glance at the
moon and marvel, we all share
the same one, only this, and
I forgive you, and I remember
the magenta rush of letting
myself want you, but also the
black eye you gave me –
you didn’t know how else
to leave.

Happy tears in my friend’s voice
over the phone, and, my God,
the earth and my soul both swell
in the relief of a rainfall, just
how long were we holding our breath,
anyway, feels so goddamn
good to rinse off.

The winter was dark and
was warm, my body bruised and
aching on the living room floor,
careful stretch, balancing act
between challenging and loving
this self, left the psych ward
in January and sobbed on
the train, please let there be
no funeral in March.

You paint my wrist pink and
blue, on a couch eight hundred miles
from the city, and we don’t say
it’s a miracle, but it is,
you and me, here, still
somehow a soft landing spot
for one another, eight hundred miles
later, still here.

I still see light in the sky at six,
and I exhale my relief, another
dark chapter behind me, and
I remember the glow that kept me
afloat, friends on couches and
phone calls for the bleak walks
home, and everything changes
but this heart stays the same,
tender, wanting, bruised, and bold,
and the light hangs on a bit longer.

The train barrels by, tossing sun
like lightning into my living room,
and I am out the door and onto
a footbridge, names in graffiti
as I descend a staircase rust red,
everyone wants their permanent
mark, and there we are, rooftop
corner, and what if I just
don’t dream of this anymore?

My childhood is Indiana summer,
chlorine skin and fresh-cut grass,
the sound of a marching band in
summer, nothing to do and
everything is possible anyway,
car-hood conversations through
a sunset rinsed blue, nobody fidgeting
cause they’ve got somewhere better to be.

The day is coming I will set this
down, close the chapter, I
won’t burn this city but I
won’t look back either, arrived
with the wisdom that nothing worth
loving will force you to hustle,
then tore off at a sprint, concrete
miles, the thunderous lights, spilling
out of bars at the sunrise, and
marveling at the blur.

I am my own constant company, I’ve
nursed every bruise and
scrape on this body, spun gold from
the rust cuts in my story, mined
pearls from the tears in my
sternum, painted meaning into
memories, a heavy gift, but
I’m well learned in the carrying.

There is nothing I have loved
I have ever known how to love halfway,
the city was a miracle even as it
broke my bones, and you were the
best friend I’ve ever known, whether
you ever meant to stay, I have
loved you, eyes unblinking, and this
is my ‘permanent mark,’ my name
in graffiti as you whisk right on
by, a love who doesn’t know
better than to love you in full.