I’m caught in the middle of two periods.

How very advantageous.

I have three tubes of almost finished Chap-stick

that I am obsessively licking

to taste your wounded lips

and a candle that never seems to go out.

“and i could not tell which fit me more comfortably,
the power, or the powerlessness; neither would
have me entirely; I was divided.”

–mary oliver

we choose
impenitent thirst or the gentle mercy
the men or the glory
we say
my god or I’m sorry
pause when agitated or doubtful
or sink your mandible heart on them

Writers write their reality into being. My veracity is devastating

telling of tragedy (maybe I can write myself happy), no saviors or climax

that doesn’t end in a casket or straitjacket or terminated pregnancy.

Girl in the bathroom asks me for a tampon.

I think I have one

somewhere.

Fish around my backpack,

trying to look young when I trudge through campus

to catch the bus. I check out the Frisbee players,

cover my bags with sunglasses,

cover my arms with denim sleeves,

cover my tracks with torn contraception.

I’m pregnant 

and my first thought is

get rid of it. I know what five percent chance means

and the joke’s on me. 

be patient

uncaged girl
wrought with marks,
hail nails,
scratched by storm,
gray arms,
dirt canines,
rock tongue
slurping you up.
settle in the caustic stomach of impermanence
when it
should have been this way!
you stomp.

easy, you’re ephemeral too,
just passing the time
with ghosts
letting the world devour you
in scheme,
well-timed stages.
and your bully heart,
bruised but
whole

always the last to go.

2. “gestalt”

under my therapist’s guidance I
sit down & talk to my inner predator;
learn where all the trouble started.

now, now, listen to the guilt it’s talking. 

1. “heart”

my place,
one giant cobweb,
can’t be swept.

I met you in skin and sun
and distant cicada sounds,
street jazz in the background.
met me where I was 
(liquefying)
and made no promise to keep me.
you unrolled your tongue
and the palm of your hand holding your girlfriends’
tiny waist and a note that I’ve read,
god, a thousand times before,
but still cuts like the first fall 
that said
I know, but nothing hot lasts