God gave you an unfinished smile
to pay for.

–beholden

restraint is an art

i intend 

to master.

but my jealousy is erupting

into fits of flowers:

roses for the look,

jasmine for the scent I wore,

one vine of honeysuckle to 

to bind you to summer where I was 

wet and still and your personal swimming pool

you could wade through,

catch some respite,

use.

I’m sending

her a bunch with no clear note

attached:

(forget||forgive||forget

him)

wafting through your bedroom

door and sitting there

much like the way I wear the 

world:.

carefully arranged

and cool.

self-effacing, straight and strong unlike the hard, twisted ways

I grow to be.

orchids to wilt in too much sunlight when I’m

doting myself to death,

a rose to give my daughter when she becomes

moss in someone else’s garden,

feral evocation: an arboretum

started at the ankle. or

a whole cherry tree

“succor”

I have only written three things down that I had to read 

over and over so  I could

finally comprehend:

my brother is dead.

I like women more than men.

It’s ok to feel pain

confinement can be comfortable,

I was taught men are safe cages.

hard.

wrote something else:

it’s ok to soften.

.We all just want a quiet year
and a veil

and a simple way

out.

 I hold
one shout in my throat

in an effort to subjugate 

myself.

my heart was a brass bell:

frozen,
staid,
caught between two
hungers,

like my waft between a hell

I could dream of

or a hell stitched in
spine.

I would pluck at my 

backbone,

and draw pictures of the

sound.

a dischordant euphony

that produced an eery shock

of light to remind me 

I contain some very black

nights.

“sarcophagus”

this next section is called

internecine

I once was a moon you craved

but now I’m a disappearing

shadow at your nightstand

waning in my own

sudden sun.

“martyr’s revenge”