Tobacco

I’ve stretched sunlight,

like a thorny thread
through my skin

and withered.

Womanly -
bleeding across my knees,
blurring alongside too many men, and
bleached by the sky’s screaming poetry -

I crave the moon
like, you crave your tobacco.

Memory:
I write everyday.
It comes naturally,
like sun
and moon.

Breaking up with Will.
Locally, we sit topsy-turvy in coffee shops,
Seattle-style. Home. It drips.
Like words into a cup, already bubbling with river water.
I watch you pull it to your lips and suck.

drip.
drip.

tip me
upside down.

And in a hotel room
I look Washington over
with chipped finger nail polish
through the curtains
while,

you took a shower in the next room.

The walls, mold
sluggishly -
folding drips into your clay cup of river water.

Your tongue
tastes like earthen sun,

where the sky meets the shadows

I fold the water into square love letters,
weave it into memory,
waste it...

And I watched as a
shutter flashed across a
glass lens staring my face down,

or how I sat
silently
for over a year.

And I was ashamed,
and full of questions
and quick remarks,

trying
to be
someone else
to impress you -

holding the sweltering cup of river water to your salty teeth,
gulping my body through yourself like a straw,

holding my breath
under the water
of your hands
clutching my shoulders

elucidating my memory
to this picture, or that picture.

And then I am sleeping
nude, and my hair is longer

covering me. And you are a
map.

A trap.

A gap - remembering the day that under sunlight
I stopped breathing. Remembering how
angelic the pain felt throughout the curves of my poetry.

Remembering the river water, running,
and then stolen...
swallowed,
and then gone.

Untitled
I don’t know if December makes sense? -
if it’s lovely enough to scar myself with,
but, unscathed, I tattoo it on my skin to remember

memory?
theme?
form?

boy?
girl!

I used to know myself
it came naturally.

Untitled II
I loved you in those dark hours of suckling.
Those dark hours
filled with noise.

Those dark hours without makeup on my face.

Those dark hours of whispering,
fucking,
tucking black piano keys into the melted white.

a buzzing crescendo, climaxing.

It wasn’t all about that, but I loved you fully in those dark hours.

End
I’m flirting with the boy at the bookstore.
Lying.
Recreating myself;
I’ll be reborn by morning.