darling,
the last time you 
were in my bed,
our arms interlocked into some sort of
spider web adjacent shape,
you asked just what I
would do to prove my love.
in the moment I said
“I’m not one for grand gesture.”
but now seems
like the sort of occasion 
to state just what I would do.
I would make your tea with just enough honey.
I would leave the toilet seat down,
without being asked.
I would fold your clothes,
because I know how much you hate it. 
I would lasso the moon,
with shades of a George Bailey.
I would learn to sing in french,
any song you desire.
I would read you every sonnet
Shakespeare ever made,
and if you wanted,
I’d pretend I wrote them instead.
If you told me to punch,
then I would punch,
and punch,
and punch and punch and punch
at the concrete,
until my knuckles were bloody,
and until they left imperfect hearts
on the pavement where you step.
point being,
there ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do
for you my love.
now please,
come lay under my covers.
you know these mornings
have been oh so lonely
without your soul next to mine. 

In this moment, scanning across the horizon
the chance to entangle with the coming day
a way to fight the fear of night.

Leaves change color
As my hair does too 
one blink of an eye
and everything is new 
I’m about to be a junior in high school now 
and I no longer have you 

I play strong,
say strong, but
the moment I
have a moment
unquiet questions burble,
surface – boiling pot
forgotten, steam stinging:
A kettle singing
songs of regret.

Dear Mother, 
You always said, 
You hoped one day that I, 
Would have a little girl, 
One, who was just like Me,
Well, I did. 

Actually, I doubled my luck, 
I got two of them, 
Two, little girls just like, Me.
Everyday, I wake up falling in love with them
More than I did the day before…
I didn’t know love like that existed 
But it does and it came from the best parts of me 
I look at them every single night
When I tuck them in,
Sealing in the love you never gave 
As I have for eighteen years now 
I realize I was not the problem.
Merely the product 
Of the love you simply couldn’t give.

A doctor tells me to align my joints
        “More normally”
        to “play a sport”
that I will be “cured by 
        sleeping better”
that every ache or cough or injury is just
        (& also Justice)
because I am fat.

A doctor tells me, when I am struggling to stay alive
when I cannot eat from sorrow my
spirit made hollow from
Grief, that
The diminishing number on the hallway scale is
        “a good problem to have.”

A doctor smirks as she orders me 
        to lift my breasts
        the apron of my belly
        the folded softness of my thighs aside
to check for skin cancer.

I hear a doctor’s snide laughter in the hallway     
        after.

heat rising
burning
scorching
sweating
rain falling
cooling
soothing
not for long
steamy
suffocating
no clouds
dry again 
heat overflowing

always waiting—
for the sun to shine,
for you to come back

always missing something—
the rain, the clouds,
you

always wanting—
something—
greedy and overreaching

I never thought you’d leave
and now I don’t think you’ll come back
and I don’t want to tell you

I miss you when the sun
warms my face—
even when it burns

I waited so long for this
and now I don’t know how to live with it—
if it’s possible

everything I should’ve ever wanted—
and no one to share it with.

“What is a Haiku?”
the fledgling poet asks me.
“Birdsong in our words.”

when did you go and turn all rotten?
let the rind harden green to blue?
a nucleus shift, gone gooey,
an alien now in the middle of you