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i
step one,
crack open the ribs
like the plastic cover
for your newest toy.

ii
step two,
discard the things inside
you don’t need; instructions
and warranty, first.

iii
step three,
enjoy until you grow tired
of its limits and downfalls and
quirks, then discard.

there are a hundred people
making love and war in my head;
all of them demanding attention,
all of them claiming a right to
this body I inhabit, claiming
they were the one meant
to move these limbs and pull
the levers and sift through
the jumble of thoughts
left behind from
a hundred different lives
lived before this one.

I think about how you may have been a trigger
I never quite tripped.

You took me to the place
where your family buried your horses,
a wide patch of land surrounded by
dying trees and yellowed grass,
and we talked about things greater than ourselves
and we walked a little more.

I don’t think I would have loved you,
despite the kindness you showed me
that only seems clear in hindsight;
you were damaged and bright
but you couldn’t crack me.
You gave me copies of Bukowski
and we spent most of our time
listening to music and sleeping,
curled up in your bed in my underwear
and I never once let you get close enough
to slip underneath them.

I never wondered if it bothered you
that you couldn’t stay with me,
that we had to drive three hours
to get to your place, and three hours
back to mine. My roommate’s husband
didn’t want men in the house, I told you,
which was true, but I don’t think
it would have saved us, anyway.

If I couldn’t get to know you
in those three hour drives or
playing pretend in your parents’ house,
I hardly think we had a chance at all.

I didn’t learn to like Bukowski
until a few years later, leafing through
the book you’d given me. He said,
Find what you love and let it kill you,
and you may not understand
but I did just that.

Cracks in the sidewalk have always made me feel vulnerable;
if concrete can crumble, what might be done to my fleshy little heart?

My hair is longer now – much longer than you’d have liked,
it curls around my rib cage like ivy,
and I think of this now and again
when it gets stuck in the door of the car
or beneath his elbow while we’re sleeping,
and I don’t mind it and neither does he.

You would have,
it might have gotten in the way at some
critical juncture when our bodies were meeting,
briefly, in a fervor of rushed expectations,
behind doors that were forbidden to be closed.
That’s all that ever really mattered to you.

I’m sure you’ve indulged
in all the things I hated about you -
the way you laughed at the stupidest jokes
and couldn’t keep to yourself when I was away;
I realized too late I was only being toyed with,
but I remember how hard you cried when I left.

At what point does being alive
ever coexist with our deepest expectations?
I’ve trudged through thus far,
at times up to my throat in the quicksand
of reality and the frailty of our souls and
the weight and agony of a battered mind.
I’ve pressed on when my bones quivered
and my heart stuttered and everything inside of me
screamed to be relieved of the burdenous nature
of life, I’ve pressed on when my lungs
were set ablaze and the wildfire ate my ribcage,
when everything went black and all I knew was
a hollow sickness that has never left me,
and I want to know
when it is going to fu*king pay off.

At night my heart cracks open
like your eggs in the morning
and everything I felt in the day
comes spilling out.

I never could break an egg quite right.

I say we ditch this old-hat life
of scrimping and barely getting by
and living as if we’ll be twenty-something
until we die. Hop a barge and flee somewhere
with more culture to get lost in,
somewhere with an accent we can adopt
to amuse our friends back home.
When we’re too broke to buy a few pints
I’ll dive into the river and let the water take me,
let it soak me to the bone and swallow me up,
and I’ll hold my breath until I sink to the bottom.
When you drag me out you can take me
to the humane society for drowned persons
and they’ll give us a few coins for our ale
and we’ll stay up late with bad jokes
and a collection of memories to amuse us
when we stop being queerplunging twenty-somethings.

i
The April air pricks at me,
dragging rough fingers along my skin,
digging up old wounds as it goes along.

ii
Daylight feels stronger,
it reflects off everything and I’m blind,
I don’t remember March being so abrasive.

iii
You hound me like the dogs
of February blizzards, howling with the wind
and chasing me indoors with the fire.

iv
But I have a January house
everything that leaves is new
and everything that enters dies.