Believe me when I say I want to be water.

I want to be unfurled like the
tattered ends of a porch flag 
of dull hardware store flowers--
the kind that grandmothers forget
to change in November when
you start to feel your own skeleton
like the sinews of the frost-
rigor mortis roots of the grass-- 
I want to be poured into white-walled rooms 
--tag me with a plastic ID bracelet
to be adorned in a NUMBER so that no one
can know my name is WATER-- 
I have only ever washed scraped knees 
and fallen from high places to spread
myself thin again in the carcasses
of hail and rain.
I want to drop myself like
a butterfly whose wings had been
plucked by the slimy lips of a 
bull frog who sang about eating 
birds and tulips.
I wall to fall like petals and and like
knee caps. Drop me like the skeletons 
in November and pulls me loose 
like porch flags. I want to paint
the walls of a white room with my thumb
prints-- all watered down 
like tulip water. 
I want to be cupped in your hands
and dropped into the grass
for a proper burial-- don't worry
about letting me fall too far--
I've already descended the sky.

When I said 'follow me' I didn't mean it.

When I said "follow me" I meant
I wanted someone to know where I was going.
I wanted an address to send
gas station post cards too--
Each will be signed a different name
from the name tag of a grocery store clerk or
a the red- collar of orange-white cat keeping watch over
the CVS parking lot-- in search of
pie tins and firefly wing-dust.
Some days I'll just leave them blank
for you to fill in a story
I haven't even written-- imagine it for me--
play God with my life for a second
so I don't have to name myself today--
I was never one for post cards because
I have too much to write--
When I said "follow me" I didn't
mean on foot-- I meant hold onto
something that you know about me
even if it's only as thin
as a gum wrapper-- I meant remember
me liked creased edges of napkins
and carrot sticks.
Think about all the times I licked
oatmeal from spoon spoons and all the times
I asked you to pet my hair
and tell me it was okay to fall apart
as long as there was enough
left to pick up the pieces and
wrap them in old post cards.
The one I'm sending today is from
the Turkey Hill up the street
from the house that I no longer
think of as home--
It has a Hex sign on the cover
with two distelfinks in a love-locked stare
and it made me think of us.
When I said "follow me" I don't know
what I meant-- but I'll meet you
at one of these gas stations
and we can talk about feet-- and roads
and whether or not distelfinks are
real animals over open boxes of
juju bees, licorice, and firefly dust. 

Where were you last night
when everything was quiet
and the doors were shut?

i found myself last night
the only one still left awake--
every single other human
had fallen victim to the pendulums 
of their own weary eye lashes--
curled up like specimens in their
test tube terrariums--
i stood watch and waited for someone
to hatch but the night was lilting
the night was lonely 
and i whispered my Hail Marys 
to the bellies of the moths
that crept in under the windowsill
to keep me company.
they brought strawberries on a paper plate
and the crusts of cold cheese pizza.
they say they had never needed sleep--
that sleep was for swallowtails
and i had to agree. 
Last night i was somewhere 
between the tiles on the roof 
and the faded constellations--
i don't think i fell asleep like
everyone else but i know i did
because i'm not a moth or a 
windowsill. 
i walked away from time last night--
and no cars found their way
down the street to push forward
the gaunt shoulders of sunset--
i had supper with every single
human while they slept 
i waited for one of them to awaken.
i saved them two strawberries
and gave the leaves to the 
moths to use as hats.
i asked when time would bring
me here again?-- at a rest stop from time
with plates of strawberries
instead of red vines
and glass bottle root beer. 
the only response was the beating
of moth wings and air conditioning. 

I took off my shoes today
to walk down the spine
of a girl who wanted to spend a 
week and four days longer
than she could loving herself.
I don't want to love her
just for the way her hip bones
dwarf the mountain ridges of Appalachia
where she leaned to make
her knees wobble like the rivers
of limestone rock-- I don't
want to know her only by
the brown hair dormant beneath her scalp
like trenches of magma veins.
No--I don't want to love her just 
for her widow's peak still eroded away by
the same un thawing lips of 
amphibian boys who want to be men--
same anorexia spoons to carve out
the gnarled knuckles of
each stream and creek and the sound of 
her own breath at night like sleet.
She took off her shoes today
and she will again and again
because she never needed sandals
or socks or shoes
only her own heels rubbed rugged 
and thick from gravel 
and smooth stones in pockets. 

Tell me your stories and we don't have 
to ever write them down--

Tell me your life story like the
tall tales of children.
If you wanted to be the boy
who won the relay race in second grade
I would love to hear you become that
even if you only got third
and a frayed green ribbon that you keep
in the back of your desk drawer
between the books that
you had wanted to read this semester.
Tell me you were once magic.
Tell no one understood but your brother.
Tell me your bed room was haunted
even if you know it was mice in the walls
or the pipes in the old house
cracking like shoulder bones--
Did you plant red delicious apple trees
like the periods of so many poems
and perhaps?
Did you ever pull blue oxs on leashes 
in the park--?
Did you learn to tie shoe laces
from licorice rope?
I want to know about the girl
who spoke seven languages--
each that she made herself.
I want to know the boy who made
his desk into a time machine
to go back to before he broke
the teacher's vase. 

When I learned about tall tales
in elementary school Mrs. Kenney
said they were lies-- but I
think they're a more
pure reflection of a truth
that we all want-- I don't want
to live a history-- I want to
live a tall tale of lovers
and saber tooth lions
with ghosts in the hallways
who leave hand prints
on the window in the spring that only
you and your brother saw. 

Leave me with only words 
and I'll write letters with my teeth.

I was wondering what I would be
if there were no letters--
If we woke up to find that
they had left for fear of being understood.
Everyone would remember there
was something underneath
the bunches of obscurely laughing 
teens on the covers of pamphlets
in high school guidance offices
but we would be able to remember 
what a 'Q' looked like.
"They were obscene," some middle school
principal would say while sipping
lack luster coffee from an untimely
Christmas mug--
Librarians would say that
they were the only thing to ever
resemble the face of God while
English professors would argue
that they were the only thing to resemble
the face of human--
And then some would never give up
and I think that would be me.
I would plant myself on street
corner even if it was too
cold to stop moving my fingers
I could count the syllables on
them to stay warm-- and CNN would
call me another victim of hysteria
while grad students would stop
repeating their thesis to them self
for five minutes to hear what 
poem I was attempting to 
stamp in the sidewalk with my
breath that day. Sometimes I would
forget a line-- maybe a whole
stanza. I would wonder what it would
look like if my volta had a face--
a thick nose like my grandmother or 
quiet brows like my brother.
I wouldn't remember most of the words
I would say-- like the shutters
of bent saxophone lips dripping 
in their own language like
melted snow into the bay--
but someone would remember. One
of them would stop and stop repeating
a grocery list, a cell phone number,
a name of a girl from a bus stop
and they would find that they
were always a 'Q' or a 'H'
And that the bones of their
jaws made up the resemblances of
every face they'd even known.
Even that of God.

Of apologies, elegies, odes, goodbyes, and thank yous

There's a list written in the carvern
on the underside of my tongue where
veins and ink have accounted for all the 
"i love yous" I have spilled so far.
I house the list there-- it was choice.
God had asked if the list would fit
on my eyelids-- I told him i already
see the whole thing every time it's dark
and I'm alone-- I told him
it was too long and I wanted to taste
all of the names each time I said
an "i love you" again. Like a scar and
a horehound throat candy and a honey packet  
and the licks at the bottom of a bowl
of vanilla bean ice cream.
Behind my "i love yous" I'm hiding
"I'm sorry and I have your giraffe"
"I didn't mean to say it so loud"
"I miss the way you scribbled in 
the right hand corner of notebooks"
"I remember walking on the big
stones in the creek" "No I don't eat
chocolate chip pancakes but I 
love peanut butter" "I didn't even
like pizza-- I just tried it for you"
"I don't actually know anything about religion"
"I never prayed a full rosary for anyone
but you" "I'm lost and I'm making a map out of you"
"Stop-- I've never wanted to be held like that"
"I'll think about you when I roast marshmallows"
"I never threw out the necklace"
"You taught me how to tie my shoes and I forgot"
"There are kisses that I don't mind remembering
and ones that feel like poison ivy under my skin."
"I never wanted to run away with you
but you tricked me into so many bus stations"
"Stop saving me-- I want to save myself for once"
"You make me love painted finger nails"
"You make me want to eat angle food cake
and pretend that it's my wedding"
"Take a walk with me-- we'll talk about 
something and it might go no where"
"i love you" "i love you" "i love you"
And it's all for you-- a thousand tongues of
flames and marshmallows. 

At least for today I don't want to shrink
you down to the size of a 
"thank you."
Thanks yous are for stone bracelets,
apricot scones, and the sputtering of the coffee pot 
in the mornings.
They're for blue birthday cupcakes
that wear icing like a wrinkled skirt--
Thank yous are four a.m.

Today I don't want to say thank you.
I want to say I wear
the things between us around my wrists
like leather bracelets-- they sprouted
my flower crowns and painted on the 
layers of my callous feet like slippers--

I want to say that the arches of your heels
stamp out the curvature of each vertebrae
I own-- wobble like river rocks and loose teeth--
I follow it each morning to the other side 
of a creek that just happens to be
the beach of Chingoteague
at sunset back when we both ate
crab cakes.
I want to say I remember you painted my
fingers like watermelons one night
when I begged you even though it
was late and you had just gotten
home from work--
I want to say only you were
the voice of the wind on a car ride.
I want to say I still roll down
my window to listen.
I want to say I'm sorry for all the
Dead Hyacinth bushes and African violets
I've bought for mother's days.

We've never been flowers mom. We've been
Amethyst and callous feet pressed on the lips
of a raspberry bush. We've been jars and  
the blueberry jam inside-- we picked each berry like pearls.
We've been peanut butter toast.
We've been the Wendy's road-stop.
We've pulled each other like pretzel dough
and weighted out some afternoons
like summer squash and zucchini.

You can always meet me where it smells
like burnt pancakes and the strawberry jam
we slide between them. Somewhere on the 
other side of creek that is also somehow
a beach we're always trying to find
but always end up on a back farm road
where the corn bows like cupcake skirts. 

My uncle called me a rain forest baby.

swaddled in chewed-edge towels and
lavender shampoo still yet completely
washed from my hair-- he called me 
a rain forest baby-- asked where
they had found me--

I had waited a long time orphaned, 
lay in a clearing between
two ceiba trees where I had been born
from the wide lips and white 
nectar sugar of passion flowers
--startled the hummingbirds
who had not noticed the body
of an almost-human among the 
vines and the dew like
a boxed jewerly box of God--
I have always been so much
like a plastic fruit basket--
especially the grapes--
No-- I am
not a goddess or a prophet or
even keel billed-toucan--
but I could be some form of a
night monkey-- blank stare
on blank verses-- I was
taught poetry from the tight
jaws of howler monkeys and
from listening to the shy
meditative hum of insect throats 
and anxiously praying thighs--
The insects make
of the wind chimes outside on the 
front porch.

I wear dart frogs for earrings 
sometimes still to remind my family
I am not anything more
than a rain forest baby
with soft bones that bend like
vines and pearl necklaces--
wrap me up in chewed edge towels
I'll drink lavender nectar and
write like a howler monkey
and walk like a throat of a beetle. 

My brother and I are 2 a.m. Milano cookies.
 
My brother isn't supposed to beat me at
chess-- 
in the summer when we were old 
enough to survive off the fine cuisine of boxed
macaroni and cheese and Popsicles
but far too young
to understand how to deflect boredom
we would walk to the library.
First in line at 10 a.m. when it opened--
Glasses perched on a pointed nose
the librarian knew we were the
kids without home computers-- 
ravenous for the escape of the internet.
Me in my rainbow crocs and blue knit hat
and billy always with his collar ripped
from chewing on it when he was nervous.
In between hour long internet binges we sat
by the window with the chess set
that had no second black horse.
We'd glance up as if it were raining.
My brother always beat me at chess--
and he still always beats me at chess.
It wasn't just that he was younger 
that it bothered me-- NO he NEVER won things.
Billy was younger so he was supposed
to accept his honorable loses but no
matter what Billy placed his pawn
with a patient grace of a priest listening to
a confession. He argued against his own
check-mates-- tried to help me find a 
way out. "Another game!" I'd demand.
Between us there has never been an older sibling
even though birth separates us by three years.
When crooked neck of the trees knocking together
in a thunderstorm reminded me of that our 
house could be haunted anytime I decided it was
I slept on the floor of Billy's room.
I told him I was keeping HIM safe. And he rolled
over back to sleep. I'd bring provisions for the storm.
Lamp light. Mint Milano cookies from the cabinet downstairs.
Mason jars of pomegranate juice.
"Can I have one?" he rolled over to ask.
"One for me. One for you," I'd chirp-- glancing
at the red 4 a.m. winking from the digital clock.
"Should I brush my teeth when I'm done?" he'd ask.
"No it's almost morning."
"Is it raining?"
"No it just feels like it."