Questions

Do you know which way my 

window faces? 

Do all the stars point 

North? 

I am living on pavement with lines painted.

I am living with railings close. 

What does your footstep 

sound like? 

A stone tossed upon water 

breaks

the stillness of thought.

Our basic biological functions.

Coil of wire

twirled

around the live cable

I want to crawl in and

under.

I will tell you about the cat’s claw scraping

my windowsill

If you tell me about something, 

anything.

I wait for the other hand to reach out, 

always. 

These days, 

what is the color of your heart? 

Talismans

When my mother

left me home

with a babysitter, she used to

give me the cloth--

the piece of cotton

she kept by her bedside

to rub between her fingers

in hours of anxiety.

It smelled of her (roses

and patchouli, kissed by silver).

The T-shirt you left me

(soft cotton, burnt orange)

hasn’t been washed.

I leave it folded on my bedside

so every night I smell

the faint pine man sweat green skunk

hinting of your presence.

Nightmare nights, I used to waken

and reach for the comfort

of my mother’s room, where I could

hear the television

running, even when the bed was empty.

Those voices

a source of comfort.

Now, nighttimes,

I reach for you in darkness, stretching

my limbs from the silent womb

of solitude, groping like a starfish, missing

the silent curve of your body, slipped

so perfectly against me, inside of me

overwhelming me. Pulling myself

towards you, inside of you,

wrapping around you,

stacking us

within one another

till we no longer distinguish

our seamless skin, a

gleaming surface. Our

selves no longer

fragments. Take me in.

This missing is not a new sensation.

I’m used to holding

conversations with silence.

I write poems in half-light

(laptop glowing in my college dorm room)

and send them to you in

California.

I get up, take a shower, scrub my torso.

I am washing you, sanitizing

my remnants. I am renouncing.

Materialism

Our flirtation is a 

history of shared objects. 

The apple you brought me, plucked from the orchard 

where you stained childish fingers 

and bruised elbows, climbing. 

The sketches I left in your room, abstract

representations of my longing. Lines and diagrams, concentric circles. I was not an artist 

but chose anyway 

to torture you with my obscurity 

and litter your desk with my love notes. 

You sat on the floor 

of my tiny apartment,

folding paper cranes 

out of post-its. You left my table littered 

with intricate paper sculptures;

origami was a reflex, they were not 

signs of your affection.

I placed them on my dresser, re-

arranged them. As if 

our hands were touching.

I still carry the broken  

heart you folded from scraps of wire. 

It is a scrap, a trinket, 

that serves as a reminder. 

The only letter I wrote you 

remains unopened. 

I had to pinch your nose

to get you to swallow it. 

The last gift you gave me, 

on the day we parted, 

was a daisy. You

left it on my desk 

to absorb the sunlight

and my roommate placed it in a glass of water. 

I tucked it 

behind my ear and 

let it wilt in my hair.