blubber 

i become a whale when you're gone.
light candles. call the gods. 
fill every room with my heart. 
my fluke out the back door,
slapping the sky. i break windows.
invite visitors to my lungs. tell them
to play good music & have a pink night.
try to lock the doors. invite my brother
who is also a whale. lay beached 
in the impending july. i pry my own blubber
from the bone to rewind the sun. 
we have so many fire waiting inside us.
what is a whale without the ocean?
it rains tonight & i consider running outside
without my legs. i try to sell the blubber.
try to make a salad with it. remember that
once we were devoured like love poems.
when you come home i will have
so much body for you. enough so that
we won't need to fix the windows.
me, the house. jonah inside still praying
as if his god can hear him. i feed him
spoonfuls of blubber. i explain,
"distance is not just a measure of air.
instead, it is language metric. will my 
voice touch yours? will it pool or will
it fall?" in all my whaleness i look up
at the stars. they come to join me as 
barnacles. it is a relief to swell. to be 
large enough to hold all this ache.  

bath toy

i love a tiny day where
i get as small as i can & try
to find a monster to look at me.
in the bath tub i feel like
a rubber duck, guts full of
bright water. the tub becomes 
a lake & we are paddling &
you are holding me in the palm
of your hand. it is terrifying
to get older mostly because you notice
not only how small you are
but how small everyone else is too.
i have once found my dad as 
a bath toy too. i shut the curtain.
no need for a shower today i have had
enough embarrassing moments
for a lifetime. i learned that none
of them know how to tell each other,
"i am hurting." so the wounds become
lakes. becomes tributaries that snake
all around our bodies. i find myself
as a blood vessel & sometimes just
a leaf stuck to the driveway. i crave
the smallness though. to be taken
on an exhale. i look for monsters 
because i want to believe someone
is big enough to pocket me. to crush me
in one move. a thumb to my back.
instead, the world is shrinking.
i got invited to a war criminal's house
& he was shorter than my father. 
less coarse too. i believe he is probably
smaller than me when all the lights
go out & the magnifying glasses 
stop kissing his feet. the realization
was comforting & terrible. when i say
"monster" i do not mean evil.
i mean god please let there be someone
who can swallow me whole. there are
less monsters the older i get. i have
to go to the mountains to find them.
i lay face up in the bath. lose my smallness
to the thunderstorm outside. remember
being a child & how my mom would 
tell us not to be in the bath when
a storm came. me, no longer a bath toy.
just a boy in a bowl of soup. the storm
throws spoons at the pavement. 

waiting room chairs

i feed the chairs until
they turn into deer. they have wanted
an escape for years. we end up 
in the parking lot outside the big
hospital place where everyone
is blue. a deer gets hit & instantly 
becomes a pile of carnations. 
i forget what carnations mean but
i am pretty sure they are not meant
for the sick. in a trash bag 
i gather them up so no one has to look
at this mistake. the remaining deer
are so eager. they steal bodies
from their horrors & say,
"you are not sick, you are just
in need of a different life." how many times
have i needed a different life?
my blood like carnations. the ghosts
without any teeth. i keep feeding the deer.
everyone thinks of liberation but not
of tending. someone will have
to keep the ghosts from going hungry.
someone will have to love the deer
or else another waiting room will arrive
with more terror than before. a big doctor
instead of a small one. my parents
used to make me go to sunday school.
one day we walked to the church 
to watch a sculptor carve a great mary statue.
there were deer watching from
the nearby fields. i wondered if
anyone else was looking at them. 
doctors' windows open in the sky.
i always hoped sunday school would give me
some big secret at the end. like they
would open a door & there god would
be not like a deer or a waiting room but
like a release. that never came.
the questions grew legs & doors.
i want my questions to bloom. 
we are told to wait so much that 
the waiting can start to almost feel holy.
it is not. there are trees. there are deer.
us too, with teeth in our skulls. 
a waiting place without any chairs
blown open like a harmonica room.
everyone in the violet crushed air. 
all the doors, gone. replaced with carnations
wrong as they may be. 

slideshow

my sibling & i wake up sometimes 
in the middle of the field behind 
our parents' house. there are horses 
& there are cisterns we could fall down.
i am always the only one with a camera.
i keep it a secret. i used to be unsure 
of where the photos went. that is until
one day i was visiting our parents & the slideshow 
started. a projection on the wall
of the living room. us in the corn & 
the sky like a plate of bugs. no one else
could see the slides but me & my sibling.
they looked confused. they begged me
to make it stop. the projection came
from somewhere else. a light 
without a source. it is hard to share 
a dream. there is a tug of all the desires
the other ghost has. my sibling & i have
always been like two gulls, our feathers
iridescent in the purple dark. in the slideshow
were pictures of us at the park & 
us at the overlook on the other side 
of town & us on the phone
on a midnight where i asked them if
i could be a hole in the moon & if i was
going to survive. our story is of twin
eclipses. our shadows devour each other.
in the dream though there is always comfort.
relief. like finally it is just us 
& the field. a breeze turns our bones to grain.
they are always the first one to leave.
the slideshow always ends with 
the latest picture i have taken. i do not 
know why i can't tell them that i have
a camera. that my eyes cull marbles
from our faces. sometimes they will
show me their journal. inside are so many
slideshows. slideshows inside slideshows. 
the light ends & then it is just an open window
& the blue walls & our parents 
like shovels leaning against the wall. 

your parents visited

so i took my face off & smiled like
a watermelon. put the moon in
the fridge. turned off the wild lights
& stood like an altar server. they were
smaller than i thought they should be.
in your mouth your parents had always
been giants without any wings.
in the apartment though, they were
crooked people. a plaid shirt. stubble. 
flat old-lady shoes. they smelled like
"fresh laundry." we did not know
where to have them sit. there was the sofa
always sinking into the floor. the windowsill
where we kissed once or twice.
it was a bad time for parents to see us.
still, you had insisted they come. i had
not wanted to meet them. maybe i knew
everything was spilling. a hole in 
the bottom of a great lung. i did not
see you them. instead, i saw distances. 
saw your smallness too. the way you
hovered in them as if they were archways.
i didn't really like them. didn't want
to show them the bathroom or the ceiling
or the bedroom where we had finally
hung curtains only a week earlier. 
at night i thought they would go home
but instead they stayed. slept like horses
standing up in the dining room. it took them
three days to leave. still, i would catch them
on the sidewalk outside. maybe they were
trying to fix us. i did not want to fix us.
i wanted to kiss in the dark. i wanted
no one but us to know how we lived
which was sparsely, without enough light.
 

blue tile bathroom

i loved our boyfriend bathroom.
the swimming pool right beneath
the tongue. on bruise nights
i listened to the man upstairs 
tearing apart his life. he was 
pacing & making calls. he did not
have a swimming pool. my pool
stretched far. got deeper each day.
i would sometimes find a bonnet
& a pair of lost keys in there.
no lifeguard so i could do whatever
breath-holding i wanted. turned my lungs
into coin purses. the man had 
a wife & lost her. the tiles were smooth
to the touch. reminded me of 
elementary school when every texture
still had a sound. i spent as long 
as i could in the bathroom. found
the pool there too, though i never had
enough courage to take the plunge
during the school day. once the man
knocked on my front door while i was
busy swimming. i wrapped myself 
in a towel & answered. he asked,
"are all your friends alive?" i admitted,
"no, not anymore." he seemed relieved.
maybe wondering if his burdens were
mundane or unique. i almost offered
for him to come inside & enjoy the water.
if i told anyone about the pool though
it would disappear. i had already almost lost it
when the ceiling started to leak & great
huge tuna fell from above. he learned 
to levitate once for a week only. 
i did not hear his feet, only his voice.
sometimes i do hear people long after
they are speaking. a ghost sense or 
psychosis, whatever you want to call it. 
the tiles were blue. deep blue. the only
part of the apartment not trying
to fall apart. sturdy. checkered like cow's teeth.
i floated, face up. 

french doors

i used to sleep in a bucket of teeth. 
daylight kicking the windows. we were
using blankets as curtains. a horse escaped
through town & i took them in. 
hid them behind the french doors
leading to the front room. i told the creature,
"stay as quiet as you can." i am an expert 
at secrets. it's in my blood. in my family
we do not say how we feel, instead we 
harbor it like bullets of milk. the french doors
were the most beautiful thing about 
that apartment. chipped crystal knobs.
they made me wonder if once the place
was once sturdier. if once someone
opened the front door & said something
like "wow" & really meant it. i broke
a lot of promises there. i promised not
to invite strangers. i promised not to keep
the horse but i did. i brushed her hair when
no one else could see us. the doors
had waffle mirrors. tiny portraits of us.
one night when i felt really small i walked
the horse down by the fountains. we drank
sick water. the horse admitted that they
had overstayed their welcome & became 
a tractor trailer. blaring lights. it felt like
a betrayal. we were supposed to be 
soft together. we were supposed to hide 
our real wounded selves. the last week 
i lived there, the one door fell off its hinge.
it was like the walls giving in. "no more,"
they said. "no more," i said in return. 
i shower in lightning storms. i talk to candles.
the room opened like a gash. the horses,
so many of them crawling out
from behind the bookshelf & underneath
the sofa. i lied by omission. i lied wild too. 
ghosts in the cupboard. a cockroach playing
violin. we leaned the doors up against
the wall as we emptied the place. 
i left fragments there. my ghost still
tries to sleep in the light. 

sidewalk salt

i get my constellations
from the grocery store. i know i should
not have eaten my hands but
here i am, doveless in 
the moonlight. i think of my loneliness
like a limb. leg or tail or fist. 
when it is gone, still the phantom
running. the itch to walk out
on a night full of doors. god i miss
the city. god i miss the mountain. 
i even miss the field behind
my parents' house where the vultures
took turns telling stories about
the times before the sky. when it snows,
the sidewalks in the city went
all patchwork. one house with
a shoveler. one house with a sidewalk salt
lover. enough to pretzel a life into
oblivion. crunching beneath 
my unraveling shoes. i talked 
to the mountain once & it said
everything tasted too salty. i suggested
that maybe it was because of 
how we handle the snow. the mountain
sighed. there was something important
that i did not understand. i asked 
if she could explain it to me &
the mountain said, "i would not
have enough time even if i tried."
in the kitchen sometimes i get it in
my head that i need a taste. my pointer finger
in the bowl of crystals. salt from
the stars & star from the wind
& salt from the salmon. snow water 
in the creeks now, gushing like 
a spilled tomb. 

pilgrim

when i missed you i would go
to the trash can behind the building
& worship the flies. we had faded fast.
moved in together quicker than we should have.
i missed everything about the distance.
the highways i traced like cat's cradle threads
to reach you. in that growing absence
between us, i became a dumpster 
disciple. loved it most back there 
when someone had just moved out.
dumped their life into the green maw.
sofas & televisions & bent-arm white fans.
nothing good enough to salvage. i imagined
my own items too. what i would take
& what i would keep when we moved out too.
the building was not a place where people stayed.
instead, the doors had birds living in them.
they repainted the basement twice &
all the world smelled like plastic lungs. 
one man on the fourth floor smoked out
his bedroom window. when i was visiting
the trash his ash would from time to time
end up in my hair. i considered taking
you with me sometimes. i knew though
that it was too late. you had started to build
a car in the far lot. filled it with stolen watches.
the bookshelf in the living room fell while
no one was home. a fence started to grow
inside the apartment. if i showed you the trash
we might love each other again. that would
be too much for me. i do have a habit
of running away in the aftermath of 
a great promise. my queerness is butter-legged
& bright. is it too late to tell you about the 
garbage bins now? years later? when i no longer
have your name in my phone? i do not want
to get closer, i just want you to know 
i was witnessing my gods, the liminal. 
a power cord dangling from the mouth 
of the metal bin. the flies, chasing a sweet moon. 

two truths & a lie

i have never run out of birds. i have
never loved this country. i have
always loved the soil. i have always
eaten handfuls of leaves: spearmint
& jupiter & sassafras. i have sometimes 
stayed up until the sun is whispering
to the moon before a mother comes home.
i have not believed in the kindness 
of others. i have thought everyone 
was made of soot. i have driven my car
beyond where i should drive my car.
i have stolen essential oils for the thrill. i have
run away from a city. i have run away
from a lover who did not love me
& one who did. i have never bought 
enough wood. i have missed people
i should not miss. i have filled my shoes 
with carpet beetles. i have pretended
to be my father. i have sent a letter to
someone who didn't want to know me 
anymore. i have burned a flag. i have
burned a pile of wood with a mouse inside.
have carried a mouse into the middle
of the fields & let him go to fend for himself.
i have worn my mom's clothes when
she wasn't home. i have pretended to be
from a different county. i have betrayed 
the ancestors. i have made the ghosts proud.
i have never overdrafted on my bank account. 
i have always had enough money to pay off
the war collector. i have moved the mountain
to look at all the bugs underneath. i have
laughed enough to make the day worth it. 
i have never gone to bed hungry.