cylindrical

who says things like that anyway? do we, i, you?

i OD'd on coffee and flung my bike across the room. i unspooled yards and yards of cassette tape, only to see the words flaking off of it onto the floor. she says girls are like otters. he says my pheremones are calling. i say this ache in my side may send me astray. she lies on her back on the carpet watching feathery dust particles swim through the air above her nose.

the tape's over, and not a minute too soon. someone once told me his hipbones were mine for the taking. summary enhancement. smarmy melodrama. blue-green patterns on rugs worth more than our homes. the asymmetry of yr roving thoughts and mine, and the shapes of our inquisitive noses. she lies on her back on the carpet with her face in a puddle of sunshine.

not my weak guts and raw eyes and chapped lips. my legs curl up while i sit on the ground and wait for yr eyes to meet mine. (i stare down from escalators.) i'd blush if you knew. (and all the faux cheese sauce we could ever think to eat.)

sailboat

a whole fleet of numbered days and sails raised like hackles to the wind, against the wind, always against because it gusts in our faces no matter which way we turn. we hustle and bustle and hubbub is the name of the game though we should be striving for less hullaballoo and more hovering quietudes instead, like do you recall coffee and poetry in the hammock in the cool mornings of summer, in the backyard before work, waiting for my lids to fully greet the day? oh, what contentment.

there are blizzards of yr skin in these blankets.

parfait

each day sashays along. these roles might be miscast.

i filled a jar with papaya peels and it smelled like frogs and other bright wet things. (maybe one day we'll cut into one and find its cavity brimming with tadpoles.)

we are riding the waves of inertia, sometimes. we all know we are displaced, unhoused from the land and the dirt of our heels, but we strap on blinders and just look on down all these flat, straight avenues. we fall to our knees, but only to better see the dawn.

this is something else. shadowing his cheeks and his fingers.

we pause.

i ask, again, How've you been? we both pause. he looks at the door, the floor, me.

drown

resolve. reserve.

i try and remember my dreams every night, but they roll off my tossing and turning shoulders while i wake.

i dream of california like it's the land of sunshine and short sleeves and all these sweet girls who got sick of chicago and went back to the west. i'll bus towards the sunset. i'll place my toes beside yours, and we'll smile and raise our fists in celebration of still standing upright on this damn spinning earth.

you are so silly; you are so strong. i slip slap slingshot taffy fears. we trade candy hearts for valentine's day. i wink a goodbye as i fall down the stairs on my way to the door.

you are back to never quite looking me in the eye.

drink water 'til you drown.