In a dream, under violet
light, you appear and, for once,
we know each other, you ask
will you stay with me this time,
and

Waking is akin to a dredging,
my lungs are fire, ravenous air,
wet palms against the spinning earth,
why does my mind still invent you,
does my subconscious heart
still ache, awake, at the thought
of your ghostly loneliness?

My limbs hang heavy through
morning routines, hot water
to the bone, but some
indigoes won’t rinse loose,
your memory a bright pink
sore in the gums, and my mind
a tongue runneth over:
where are you today, and
do I haunt you this way,
and was any of it real, and
is it better if it was?

I lug my cat’s tower toward
the window, bedroom and living room,
back and forth, because he
revels in this kind of change, the
same world through new eyes, and I
revel in his reveling, motor engine purrs
and paw swipes against my passing arm.

Outside, the world changes once more,
right on schedule, and I marvel at the
passage of time, bike across the Pulaski
to clink beers with my friend, talking
boys and botox, and the sun
sets too soon on our afternoon,
telltale sign of a chapter well lived,
always too few pages
for the stories we love.

Fruity Pebbles after sex, this is
luxury, spoon clink smiles
and stealing just a few more minutes
from the indigo blanket of sleep
to show each other something stupid
on our phones, the days piling up
into storied stacks on the shelves.

Love looks like a text message
ten minutes after your friend leaves
three heart-eyed emojis
and you both know it means
what a night,
what a thing to have a friend.

Love looks like a son
camped out in the waiting room
waiting on the woman
who has always steadied him,
whispering promises she can lean
on him, he will be steady,
even with shaking hands.

Love looks like an outstretched
hand, there is healing, wounds
will mend, there can
be f l o u r i s h i n g,
stronger in the snaps than
ever imagined before.

For better, for worse, I will remember
in vivid detail, the way you pulled back
from kissing me to marvel, ‘that smile,’
and the small affection of your foot
against my leg as you slept, as
though we were otters, and
no current could part us if you
just kept contact.

I will pack up the apartment, and
among the strange and hollow walls, I
will sing in detail about the night
we clinked margaritas in a hotel bar,
dreamers in cahoots, and I
will remember us this way, forever,
finders, keepers.

That restaurant in Chelsea is the
one where we kissed before biking
to the ice cream shop, next to the
place where you yelled at me
until I cried, and I asked you, why
do I have to cry before you stop
yelling?

All the stories will come with me,
boxes sagging under the weight of
a hundred lives lived, loves like
petals pressed into pages, no
longer living but vibrant reminders,
I will remember it all, the lessons
like broken skin and discoveries
blood rush madness, and I’ll
tell them like a man who
has mastered the mundane
art of time travel.

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.