i will love you on the seabed

i think
the only way we can love each other
is underwater

me
floating in my diving bell
you
latched on to
the bottom of the ocean

we can suffer quietly
slightly away from one another
touching only floating sediments
of our heavy seabed souls

we can be alone together
we will never hurt each other

Those Additives

you again,
pack of cigarettes,
warning me to stop
taking you in,
but your thumb on my kneecap,
those additives...

let me tell you the story about Rodney

let me get drunk
and tell you the same story
again and again
about Rodney
who died on his bicycle
and though i didn't know him
i thought of him as a mystic
foreign tongued shaman
sitting at the corner store

we can have our laughs
but i never feel safe
it's easier to blame the scar beneath my navel
on teen angst
it's hard to be a good friend
yawning while you speak with them
repeating key words
to calm your demons
listen, listen

let me tell you the story
of how i will forget everything
again and again
as not to offend you
it is much easier
than to tell you
how as a child
i became a crippled pony
crawling on my knees for weeks

do not trust a word i am saying
it is easier
to stay strangers
as not to hurt you
when i ask your name for the fourth time
or you can come home
and wrap gauze around my knees
listen as i tell you the story about Rodney

mindset

when you grow up
thinking dead flies in
the butter boat
are the beautiful butterflies
you've heard about
you react differently
to cars hitting cats
gnats and kids dying
when you can't read,
what's an obituary
mean anyway

What does a breakdown look like?

what does a breakdown look like

teddy bear stuffing strewn across the bathroom floor

bits of blood or Malbec beneath your fingernails

your son's decapitated head sitting in the driveway

green, like money

smears on the wall of your bedroom, of every room

a child's body shaking with madness

blurred, similar to oxidized glass, similar to the wine bottle bottom

jumping three stories and taking the stairs back up

no reason

no memory

that is what a breakdown looks like