This was our park she  thought, this isn’t how it should be 

I wasn’t meant to call you every week,
but you promised to take me thrifting.

You weren’t meant to drive four hours each way to visit me
but you were invited to my bonfire.

We weren’t going to be in each other’s weddings
but we were supposed to share at least a few more triple dippers.

We weren’t meant to have forever,
but we were supposed to have one more summer.

She sets down the knife
opens her arms
narrows the world 
a warm shoulder
hand stroking my back
a kiss on the scalp

she asks if it’s all better
not quite, I say 
but at least you’re here with me

may the turning of solstice
with the light of the moon
meet the desires that have been burning

You are my savior and my killer,

bandaging up my wrist

only to scrape your fangs against my neck.

Stop teasing me

and drain me of this life

I do not want.

Neither of us can give the other

what they crave.

I have no desire to live forever

even if it’s with you.

I can’t be whoever it is you see

when you look at me.

I won’t live for you.

You won’t take my life.

We dance alone together.

We find brief comfort in each other’s arms

but not enough to dispel our mutual darkness.

it was on the Atari 2600
blue and green and red 
block colors across the round 
screen of a 13 inch Zenith 
jammed into the corner 
of your room 

this was the only game
we ever sat down 
played together 
taking turns
handing the black joystick 
with the bright single red button
back and forth

when it was your turn 
you would sit 
cross legged 
with your Joe Camel leather jacket
his cigarettes that killed you
in the side pocket 

during the week 
the sun would get that 
sting the back of your eyes
teeth grinding no cloud 
weighted presence 
the day would go raw
in the gums 
where you wanted to chew
your own fingers 
I’d play the game

without you 
but a ghost 
couldn’t and still can’t 
fix what’s been taken
by whatever hold 
Ohio and
a set
of
painted nails 
had on you 

Ratcheting up the stakes, yet every day is the same numb
as we sit and boil like frogs inside our own separate skulls. 
You, atheist, will go to church in that nice floral cotton dress.
I’ll wait at home unblinking until my eyes burn. You’ll pretend
you’re not looking for hope somewhere, anywhere. You’ll lie 
when I ask you if it’s because you witness my hopelessness,
and that scares you more than this sickness itself. Lately,
there’s nothing I can control. Everything is swept under
the tide of passing time, so indistinguishable, so turbulent.
You drink some nights, and I read my own horrific records.
They hang around like dead weight. You told me to let it go 
because you thought murder would be my next choice
of retribution. By retribution I meant graphic, honest letters, 
and formal complaints of malpractice. Something to document
the consequence of bad systems. But no ink on page is enough
to communicate the depravity. Nothing could ever be so violent,
so grotesque as watching a mother watch her daughter 
disintegrate like paper in rain. Hearing her daughter say
I don’t think I have a soul anymore after all this botched ‘healing’.
What about the soul you loved? What about your baby girl,
now the same weight all grown up, so very tired, so faithless?
I see you hurt when I hurt. I see you garden and clean and shop
and try to live when I cannot. We are both treading this wreck.

the evil flower

toyed with me. i cried for help,

but nobody came

or The Poem I Can’t Write

It’s hard to write poems
when there’s a new disaster every day
each one louder, crueler, closer to the bone.

I keep asking myself things like:

– How many ways must we break this world
before we forget how to name the pieces?
– How much devastation can a person
witness and still return to their own breath?
– How much despair can we hold before
it spills into us too deep?

I want to believe there’s a bottom
a place we hit, then rise.

But sometimes I think the fall
is the only thing we’re certain of.

Still, we brace. We reach. We hold hands.
We light lamps in the dark.

I don’t have answers.
I don’t even have a poem, not really,

just these questions,
just this ache,

just the motion of my pen
trying to make something out of the silence.