No Strings Attached...

Your not one for staring, but I think I just caught you. I know I’ll go home with you, I always do. I know that in and hour or two when we’ve snuck away from our friends and the bar has closed that your hands will be racing up my skirt and your tongue tracing the insides of my thighs. I’ll have the taste of beer on my mouth from yours and I’ll leave wishing I could’ve stayed longer. You're my oldest friend. The one who watched torturous love movies with me until my broken heart was healed. Drove me to 1st period and let me practice kissing on you after 6th. And now you’re my no strings attached. I pinch my wrist every time I wonder what it would be like to have strings with you. Instead I pull off clothes that smell like you, get back into mine and take my coffee to go. Damn strings.

It Ain't Easy Being Green

You tilt your head to one side and announce in a curious voice that my aura is green-a teaching color, a healing color. You’re right I am green. I pull on socks that used to belong to the guy who made me this color. They were at the bottom of my drawer and it’s laundry day. They’re too big but I really needed socks. I’m getting better at this green thing. Instead of chanting mantras throughout the day to exempt me from these socks I laugh and thank the universe that socks are my only problem. But even so, I write a note to buy more socks.

My, What Big Teeth You Have...

You’re watching me. I can feel your eyes on me like a wolf waiting to infect me with a hungry snap of your sharp teeth. I wonder if you always stand this close to girls. I ask you, but instead of answering you laugh and squint at me like I’m being playful. So I endure this too close of space and wait for you to finish the show you're putting on. A person with teeth that white can't be trusted. It’s because of men like you that I sneak out of parties, beds, and arms holding me too tight.

Happy New Year

I’m reading old entries of you, words I scribbled over tears and friends urging me to be rational. Entries that consumed me and that eventually brought me to this place. A new year is coming and my thoughts are still with you. Lips I used to love to kiss and a sadness of your loss that I never thought I would recover are with me greater than ever as I watch the clock moving closer to a different time. I’m lost in a memory. We have so much different lives now. I’m not sure the gravity of this change really hit me until now. I’m not sure were even in the same time zones anymore, is your year starting at my midnight? When our friends are done rattling off the count down we will be kissing other people, feeling someone else’s body and tasting a strangers tongue. But still, my thoughts are with you. Always. I’m counting on this midnight to make you vanish from my mind, that I will lose you and my memories will be lost somewhere else: In a new year.

Love Letters

I say, I’m not sure.

You say, what do you mean your not sure?

It would seem obvious, of course Oscar Wilde beats any other love letter.

But what happened to him and his lover anyway, I ask.

We’re laying in the dark but I can tell that you shake your head, and I look at you skeptically.

You tell me it’s on page 63, I know that page number.

I recall touching each word with the tip of my finger and mouthing them in silence, “Love me always, love me always.”

I squeeze my eyelids shut, I’m dizzy and these words sting me.

I read on, “most loved of all loves, my soul clings to your soul, my life is your life…”

I exhale in disappointment and decide I’ll try to understand you another day, in another life, when those words don’t leave my skin crawling with memories of you.

My Favorite Librarian

She tells me it’s on the bottom shelf, that the section is small. I don’t like her tone, as if my request was too much, unreasonable even. I find the sad little section of poetry, pick my spot on the floor, sit criss-cross applesauce and start my search. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Whatever it is I haven’t found it in Jane Austen, Beethoven, or on this bottom shelf. I watch the librarian from my spot. Her hair is silver, her face construed out of something I recognize in my own on days like this. She’s just a little better at it. She walks by, mustering a softer voice, “the poetry section isn’t as popular anymore. It just collects dust,” she wrinkles her nose at this declaration. I think she sensed I was hoping to find something here. I pretend she’s just having a bad day and that after the library closes she goes home to a love so great it wouldn’t fit on the bottom shelf. But I know better, and so does she. The bottom shelf is disappointing. On my way out, I stop at the counter and tell her goodbye. She tears her eyes away from her screen for a second, an obligatory second, and says goodbye. I want to hug this stranger, tell her something, but I don’t know where to start.

Mother May I?

I don’t know how these lines became so blurred. I turn and turn and when I fall in my dizzy pile I land in the place I started. Again and again, I can never seem to get away from you. I wash away in pink pills and prescriptions that I’m too tired to care what they’ll do. You say it’ll help so I reach for your relief. Does it help? I’m not sure. In this moment it’s my savior, but I worry for the moment it’s over. I surrender to the solace but as I dwindle down I’m reminded that I’ll have to fix these dizzy piles and wrong destinations. But, for now I cling to this spell and let myself sink down the rabbit hole.