Welcome Back

Pour it out.
Vomit into my hands, and
I will hold you and
what you've needed to throw away.
Give thanks for the propellers
in your arms, call them veins
and love and goosebumps.
Whisper through trees too quiet
like you were the patience of starlight.
She spent 30 years getting here.
She traveled through an asteroid belt.
Stars don't get stains or
covered in satin or given
sainthood. What is it like to be
a needle in a black haystack?
I would ask her, but I'm frightened
of what her eyes would tell me
before her mouth could open,
swallowing me like a child's forehead
into wonderment.

Dedicated to the last 3 weeks of my job.

She only thinks
out loud, finding
a million ways to say
a million nothings.
Reaching deep for compliments
about her highlights
and slimming skirt.
I look at my chopsticks
and ask how hard I
would have to throw my face
to penetrate my brain.
It's been twenty five
minutes now and I'm
crawling with nausea. How can she
be so full of herself?
Then she asks how my day
has been, and
I realize
I haven't been
paying any attention to her
at all.
Sometimes, I'm too proud
to apologize.

To be shipwrecked

The head-rush is not
as instant as one
would think.
There is a settling
of iron in your
circulation, first.
Sweat retreats back
through your pores.
Then her empty
eyes ring like crystal
under a wet thumb.
And you pray to be deaf,
or blind.
Sirens perch on
her eyelashes,
inviting you into a paradise
filled with shattered hulls
and stories you don't get the endings of.
.....
possible nicknames continued
.....
Double-stitch,
sweet pea. Don't ever
let me rip you open.

Woof in Sheeeps Clothing

The want to know what I've been writing,
so I tell them.
.....
There were more blackouts
this week than normal.
And tonight,
when I laid in the grass,
I felt my hand touch a withered
dandelion stalk and mistook it
for someone next to me.
I suppose a more proper title would
be "What I am not writing."
Because in all honesty, the poems
exist in what I
leave out.