ATTN:

If you would like to propose to me,

here is how you should do it:

Using the key I gave you

you should let yourself into my apartment

on a Tuesday night

and you should spell out the words

“Will You Marry Me”

with expensive, really beautiful and fresh

sushi, on my kitchen table

for me to come home to

after a long day at work.

You should not be there when I get home.

I will eat the sushi

And call you to say “yes”.

"As" Virginia Woolf: Most Likely Something I'll Hate to Read in 2 Years

She came home that Tuesday night as she always did, taking the 6 pm bus, which, in the winter months, meant a cold and dark commute home. The lights in her apartment lobby greeted her with their familiar fluorescent golden glow, the elevator met her nostrils with the same stale smell of breath and musk from many different mouths and bodies occupying a small space for a short amount of time. Her key turned with a gentle deftness; the sound of the deadbolt retracting from the lock assured her that the door had indeed remained the way she had left it: locked. From 8am to 6:30pm, her possessions has been shut up and safe, and she walked through the door knowing there would be nothing unexpected waiting for her.

However, she had forgotten that another key had been made, months ago, and given, out of convenience's sake, to that other body who often found itself needing something that was in her appartment, something that had been forgotten, left in the morning after lingering too long in her arms, realizing he was late and, in his haste, leaving behind the leftover Chinese food from dinner the night before that he had planned to eat that afternoon for lunch. She would get a message on her phone at 11:30am and, smiling, she would roll her eyes, knowing that she could later expect to meet this body at the corner outside of her office to pass him the key. One day, she, for convenience's sake and because she trusted him, presented him with a key of his own. “For the next time you forget your lunch,” she said with a smirk as she held it out to him. His cheeks burned as he accepted the gift, at once embarrassed by and thankful for his tendency to always forget, when he saw her hair on the pillow beside him in the morning, those aspects of his daily routine that ought not to be forgotten. It was miraculous to him that she seemed the most lovely in her waking moments-- her morning breath was not stale, but raw, her eyes not empty of makeup but shining with rest. 

It was for these sleepy eyes that he used the gift-given key to let himself into her apartment at 5:55pm that Tuesday night, knowing she would be taking the bus soon, knowing that if he did it any earlier, the fresh, expensive fish might go bad. It was for these sleepy morning eyes, and because he hoped that he might see them every day for the rest of his waking mornings, he aligned the seaweed-wrapped spirals into the question he wanted to ask her-- in a way she would respect, in a way that would make her really consider the question, because of the gesture with which it was asked. He did not want the question to linger in the air between her ears and his mouth, air was too fickle and thin of a medium, it was too risky that way, he wanted to ask it in a way that guaranteed some sort of staying-power. In a nod to their Monday night tradition of dinner at Ocean China on the corner of Brodie and William Cannon, he laid out the words of the question on her kitchen table in her favorite rolls: Philadelphia and yellowfin tuna.

At 6pm, the moment she saw her bus round the corner and head to her stop, he was setting down the question mark; his fingers trembling with the pressure and urgency of perfection, he imagined her face the moment she would see it, and indeed, as it would be: stunned, happy and willing.

It’s hard to believe when I’m with you

In between the stacks, you checked over your left and right shoulder before you leaned in to kiss me
I think we were in the PQs, near some modern Spanish authors. I am certain that we have kissed in between stacks of books more than any two other people have.
It is hard to believe when I’m with you that we are anything but harmonious-- not the same, but similarly composed—like two different octaves plucked from one set of strings.
It is easy for me to know how we are similar and to suppose and to trust that we are different.

I look at you, and I would rather feel myself present in your gaze than move forward in any way, into any progression of time
Your hand on my back propping me up as I sit across your lap is like the second hand of a clock gone still

How has anyone ever been able to wrench themselves from their lover’s arms in the morning?
In your bed I find myself lethargic, unwilling
Never able to arise myself, it is you who must reach over and turn off the alarm, or possibly set it to snooze if you’re feeling reckless
You always awake with a start and this bright vigor in your eyes, your eyes shine brighter and better in their waking moments, as if they were polished all night by small hands behind your eyeballs
Whose hands have been polishing your eyes as we slept? What tiny hands? Whose small hands?

Some part of me hopes that I will come home one day to find that you have let yourself into my apartment, spelled out the words “Will You Be My Fool” with really expensive, really beautiful and fresh sushi on my kitchen table, like how my best friend’s prom date asked her to prom with pancakes that said “Prom?” I thought that was so great and romantic.
Seeing the message, I will drop my bags on the floor, cup my hand to my mouth and pace my apartment, yelling your name, listening for your response that I slowly realize will not come how did he know, I’ll mouth to myself gosh, how did he know? I will not waste time calling you to comment on your little stunt, and to tell you that I will, yes, forever.

this is a re-write of a poem i wrote called ATTN: and i re-wrote is "as" Frank O'Hara. this was for a project in school.

Snapshot moments October/November

When you pressed your hand into the new snow skin

Piled, freshly-shoveled, on my hip, something like ticker-paper

lines of poetry began to stream through my mind,

I thought, There’s some sort of transfer going on here,

out from your mouth, into my mouth, and into my brain--

At the exact moment of your exhalation, the bright son of panic

broke into your room and my body began to shake

like the sea-leg sensation one gets after a 6 minute mile.

II.

The astringent cherry blow pop I swirled around my mouth

You said would aggravate your already swollen taste buds.

That same blow pop I took from my mouth with my left hand

When I felt your right on my cheek, like David came to Jonathan--

A heart beat. Your roommate came

Into the room and said, “You two!”

This same cherry blow pop is currently stuck

To the bottom of my recycle bin, I did not finish eating it.

III.

When we were making marble-dust gesso out of rabbit-glue

paste, my art teacher told us her mother was born in England in 1920

was there for the War, and came to Texas to die near her daughter

in a hospice. My art teacher told me that when the moment came,

it only took 8 hours, which is relatively short for a hospice death.

The class stirred wooden spoons through congealing gesso,

nodded and agreed, that was relatively short for a hospice death.

IV.

I met a sweet pup on my way home from school

I called her "good boy" until I saw her squat to pee.

She was black and white with a yoke for a collar.

She trotted behind me until I reached my porch,

Her ears pressed back against her head, like folded wings

Eyes bright, nose wet and cold, tail slowly swaying like a metronome

She tamely sat at the end of my walkway as I went inside

to fetch her a piece of turkey meat from the fridge.

V.

A bottle to my chest, breathing, intensely aware of you,

Last Friday night we both sunk into the curve of a couch

In a hot room, my bangs plastered to my face, sweating

Off makeup and my perfume changing smells as my temp rose

You nodded to my thumbnail and asked,

"What would you call this color?"

I replied with the name on the bottom of the bottle.

"Wicked."

VI.

The other day I got a text from Rex. Turns out

he finally found my number from August when I wrote it

in his yellow-paged notebook. The text was a picture

of the painting he made of me as an art class model:

Seated, my arm over my head, bent at the elbow, nude.

I showed it to Becky, she told me I should wait a day to reply.

I haven’t replied yet because I don’t know what to say

And I care about Rex, and I want it to be perfect.

VII.

When I saw you tonight, I planned to tell you about the coldness in my arms

And the numbness in my hands that I feel when I think about the words

you said to me, I imagined you would listen to me and nod your head

as your top-heavy heart galloped, as always, to the beat of a sneaker in the wash.

Instead you asked me why I have to write, and how it feels when I don’t

I told you it feels weird, and nothing makes sense

like inside of me are stacks and stacks of heavy metals and bricks.

VIII.

There's no way to prepare for this besides

to repeat your name quietly to myself so that it sounds

natural when it comes out of my mouth when I greet you.

I have noticed that the cherry trees in the spring really do

leap with a vigor into their own time when it comes

and I knew she was nice because she came to me

with her head bowed down

Notes Made in My Journal At A Music Festival, In Chronological Order

• worst dancing by stage: 1) blue 2) orange 3) black
• voting is punk rock
• real chill about the taco cannon
• this white guy in the full-on native american headdress and regalia is really pissing me off, def the biggest douche here
• why do I like music like Converge? Trance, calming, shredded mangled heart beat, primate lead singer, dreamy-eyed guy watching guitar solo with his hand on his chin
• the primal-cy of holding a light up in the crowd so someone can locate you-- human beings are truly animals
• My new favorite hobby: fff fest black stage
• really bizare Black Lips set
• Mr. Malick if you aren't going to deliver Ryan Gosling to my house then please take your douche y haircut and get out of my city
• wavves's fucking sick rendition of 'post acid'
• being in a crowd of hipsters makes me nervous
• much prefer crowd at black stage
• maybe you feel like you always get stuck next to the most annoying fans at concerts but i think this actually does always happen to me
• have eaten only some form of taco or some form of french fry this weekend
• want to analyze differences between mosh pit etiquette and see how/if it varies between countries-- what conclusions could you draw from that data?
• worst dancing by demographic: 1) coked-out white girls 2) couples 3) guys with alarmingly low bmis
• pumped to be stoked 
• I've been standing alone back stage eating a turkey leg for the past 5 minutes and people keep coming to talk to me about my turkey leg. this turkey leg is making me popular
• "it's called a sitar because you sit when you play... Sit-guitar." 
• Short story idea: your mom made a secret blog of her entire diary. she recently died, along with the url. can you guess the url and reconnect to your recently deceased mom? sounds more like a weird "alt" blockbuster. Never mind, I hate it
• black stage: tecate, orange stage: heinekin, blue stage: what ever kind of alcohol makes a DJ set bearable

honey and blood

I found myself moved this week

while doing laundry.

I came upon my white dress in my load of weekend clothes

The sight of her washed over me and I paused my work

letting the cycle run cold.

I held her out across my palm

her lace textured and soft

Wisps of my perfume loomed around the fabric

I held her and pressed my cheek to her

Hoping to find the warmth of my own body inside.

This is the dress I wore

when we went up on your roof to sit and read

out of the book you kept on your windowsill,

and your voice washed around my ears, slow and plodding,

it warmed my cheeks and hands,

it spoke more to me than the letters on the pages

endued the words with more meaning than they meant

Because they came from your mouth.

By-and-by you shut the book

Placed your arms on my shoulders

And made me smile

Like a girl in her daddy's arms.

You had told me you were cold from the wind on the roof.

I felt nothing, I told you I felt fine.

You laid your cheek on my back and closed your eyes,

stealing a bit of my warmth,

feeling the lace on my dress against your cheek.

I turned my ear towards your face, figuring you had a secret for me.

That same night, you came to me like a pilgrim to a feast.

You devoured me in your gaze, I found my eyes caught and handled by yours

You came to me but you could not lay with me,

and your bumbling response fell upon my ears with the weight of a biblical tower.

The tumbling debris killed something we both wanted to see alive.

Shell-shocked, clutching the carcass to my chest

I emerged from the rubble

I knelt and held the body in my arms

I hushed and cooed as spit bubbled up from a teething mouth.

The moment writhed and thrashed in death, soaking my dress in blood and voided fluids.

The young body, now a young corpse, fell from my hands.

I beat my breast,

I tore at my cheeks

and you gently brushed my hair to the side.

I will not evoke Samson and Delilah when I speak of what you did to me

Your hand in my hair was dripping with honey, longing and want

and it stuck to my cheek and spilled all down my front

soaked into the sleeve of my white dress

as the corpse at my feet continued to leak.

The stains set in as I left you at the disaster site

I began my tramp home in the new day dawn.

Flies swarmed the holes in my face

begging, pleading, telling me that they, too, wanted to taste the sweetness of my honey

And the salt in my blood

I shuddered and laughed, I told them there was little left of me to give.

Shattered, dazed and dripping

I came home under a sky of expired pink

I shed my clothes on the floor

I avoided my image in the mirror

I slept alone

As I pulled the dress away from my cheek, I realized she was ruined.

Dear Everyone in the World,

Hello.
Greetings.
I have to tell you something: as of right now, I do not know why I am writing this letter. Please keep reading. Maybe I will discover my reason later on in the letter. However, I can say that. in many ways, this is a letter of intent.

I found the draft to this poem in a book I bought from Amazon.com

1.) 
I saw you yesterday 
drawing some Frankenstein creature on the wall in the stairwell in Burk Hall. 
I like the drawing. It was just what the stairwell needed.
It was echoing in hallway, 
but you were quiet, around the corner, drawing.

2.) 
Haven't seen you around--
Went to see if you were sitting on the quad
like you normally do on Tuesday afternoons.
My pen is running low on you.

3.) 
I saw you with your beautiful friends 
perched on the couches in the student center like a magazine centerfold 
I went over to chat with everyone but
you were quiet.
I bought new pencils.

4.)
I saw you looking at me
I like your eyes
You are really quiet
I want to kiss you
Nothing happened

5.)
The constant opening and closing of doors is making me on-edge.
You are looking at me
You're extra quiet
You're quiet and it's making me uncomfortable
You seem sad
You are quiet and you put your head in my lap.

Here's this--

I am a lover but I’m in it to win.

I am sometimes nauseated by foods I think I am going to enjoy
I am highly interested in strangers
I am terrible at improvising
I am still very young

I have never been able to drink gin without vomiting
I have been known to become overwhelmed by people and the shape of their bodies

I wish I could assure you that I won't fall in love with you, or that I haven't already
I wish I felt pure and simply

I do everything I do because it was once done to me

I want to walk into a lake and collect her stones in my pockets
I find that being kind is more exhausting than being cold

I want to be an artist but I might suck at it
I want to meet everyone at least once
I want to reconcile jealousy with girl-love
I want two sons who will grow to be much taller than me
I want to be near water, I want to be with you

I remember the peculiar and precise decor of your bedroom
I remember the pictures you took of me swimming in my underwear
I remember breaking into a local small business and making out on the couch there
I remember and how much you look like someone's son in your driver's licence picture


My body is scary and hard for other people to deal with
I have a tattoo of a unicorn because I am one, too
It is hard for me to numb my desire for touch

I seriously believe in the power of clichés
and that all relationships are toxic
and that life is ultimately pain but it can be made beautiful
and that it is normal to have regrets

I view my groceries as an extension of myself
I have everything figured out
My eye sight is slowly deteriorating
Drunk and bitter is one of my favorite emotional states
My default is melancholy and I have to actively work against it

I think about a blond boy with a rough face and beat-up boots
shaking a cigarette out of a pack of smokes
I think about a girl, too, with a small frame, big doe eyes, and a myspace page she still checks from time to time.
The men in my life are constantly shaving; the women, putting up their hair.

There is a black marble come to rest in a long brown face.
There is a great black lash to come down and cover it.
There is a hand in my life that pulls me north and south,
There is a sun in my chest that glows with a light spectral and lambent.
Everything comes from this light.

Everything is about this light.

I won't be here again

I awoke that morning on my right side, blinking. A natural, grey light bloomed in my vision, gently illuminating the back cushion of a couch. I could make out the weak, neutral pattern of the cushion, at once both geometric and floral. My body was cradled in warmth: I could feel the fabric of your t-shirt through the gaps in the back of my dress, your hand was a gentle weight resting in the scoop of my waist. Must have slept in our clothes.

My right arm was curled under my head as a pillow. I closed my eyes again, the grey light continued to spin her web over the room. My legs were hot from the blanket you had brought to sleep, and I wondered if you were warm. I felt your breathing change, your arms shift, and the weight on my side slide along my contour. I sat up and raised my pillow-arm in the air for a stretch. I knew you could see my back through the slits in my dress. I looked over my shoulder at you and smiled. Something inside of me flexed her paws in her sleep.

"Good morning."

You turned over on your back, propping yourself up on your elbows.

"Good morning."

I lowered my arms from the stretch and self-consciously adjusted the bust of my dress. I maneuvered myself back down in the space next to you, and I came to rest my head on your chest. Your chest was very soft beneath my cheek, and your entire body gave way to the weight of mine, like a pillow-top mattress. My lashes fluttered. At close range, I examined the neck of your shirt, it was the color of coffee with cream. I noted that your skin was slightly lighter than it, the hair on your chest was sparse and small like spider legs, the crook of your neck was an inviting place for a face to press it’s mouth into, the arch of your Adam's apple bobbed when you swallowed spit as I placed my hand on the part of your torso left exposed by your tight-fitting, creamy coffee colored shirt.

"Are you hung over?"

"Mmmm, a bit," your voice softly rumbled from a deep place, "I haven't drank like that in a while."

"I think I only had half of my bottle of wine."

Your hand stirred from my back, and the movement awoke the creature that had been sleeping. She opened her jaws in the shape of a yawn and blew breath from an empty stomach out of her mouth. Your fingers struck out over new ground, gliding over skin, over the soft hills of vertebra on my spine, over meadows of small blonde hairs like fields of wheat, and traveled ever so slightly into the cave of space between my dress and my back. The hand paused, just beyond the mouth of the cave, and took a seat, daring not to breach the entrance. The creature from inside me closed her mouth and blinked once, sensing that the explorer's quest had stopped short. Licking her lips, she laid her head on her paws crossed in front of her. The moment was done, she would await another. 

I rose and went to the kitchen for a cup of water, hoping my body language would not manifest the discomfort I experienced as my brain slid around and knocked the sides of my skull. Must have drank more than half the bottle. I grabbed a red cup from the counter and sniffed it, I ran the sink and filled the cup up with tap water, I leaned on the counter and drank it all. I filled another glass and offered you some. You shook you head.

"I'll get my own."
"Okay."

I sat down on the couch and let my back slump into the cushion behind me as you stood up to fetch your water. Gazing vaguely at the coffee table, I bit the rim of my cup, my eyes sweeping over Dylan’s computer, a bag of weed (crumpled, from life in a pocket), some pens, a Dallas Mavericks pennant. You stood in the kitchen, sipping your water. The light was grey, solidly grey and bleary, disorienting, foggy, yet pleasant, still happy, still good. I stood up. I was drawn to the source of the light, I wanted to see it. I went to the balcony doors and opened one of them.

Behind the door was rain and chilly wind. I folded my arms across my chest as I stepped out of the room. Must have been the rain that woke me up. This was a rare morning in the Lone Star state. I was glad that I was here, and that someone else was here, too, with me, and that they could stand with me on the balcony, and that we could watch the street below us and the rows of apartments in front of us, peer into their windows, try to see their inhabitants; every person in every room a part of a hive of bees—all young, all prime, all ripe.

“Come, it's raining!” You came.

Dylan's balcony was small. It had concrete for the floor and metal for the railing.  The balcony was cluttered with various debris and belongings: red cups, discarded chewing gum, a girl's sweater and her bobby pins, cigarettes both fresh and smoked and my bottle of wine, nearly empty; what was left in it, about one glass, contaminated by rain falling through the slender neck, A shame, I thought, but I broke the cork getting it out, anyway. The floor of the balcony was half wet from the rain, half dry thanks to the awning, I stood in my socks on the dry part and pitched forward, leaning my hands heavily on the railing in front of me. I was beaming at the sheets of rain as they fell from the sky, sheet after sheet, like flipping through pages in a book, I thought, like a guitarist pulling his pick across the strings, I thought, like mincing a clove of garlic, rapid and thin. I looked over at you and beamed some more. The light from the sky was grey, so solidly grey.

A family ran under the balcony, the children wearing trashbags to keep from getting wet. They could have been going to church. It was Sunday, there was a church a couple of blocks away. A pair of white sneakers had been tied together and flung up over a powerline. Birds were eating from packets of Ramen that had fallen in the street from some drunken room above us, the noodles had cooked and softened in the gutter, the birds slurped them from the packets like worms from the ground, worms for the early birds.

You stepped out further on to the porch and shut the door. The creature from my old cold habitat perked up her ears as you placed your arm around me and faced the rain, she put her black nose to the air and inhaled, grasping at a scent. She rose, and I felt her begin to pace excitedly, working out the kinks in her legs. She would wait, patiently, knowing what the rain would bring. Her bestial mind understood that rain falls with the promise of new life. She would soon be able to feast on a cricket, on a mouse, on a lark.

I saw that a window was broken in the parking garage across the street.  I heard the metallic hum of an industrial-sized air conditioner. I saw flags and foldable lawn chairs on balconies, rippled by gusts of wind. I noticed a door open and shut. I looked up into the sky, I saw the grey light, I blew her a kiss. She smiled back at me with a mother's smile as she gently spread her blanket over the hive, urging us all to go back to bed.

Bicycle Gang Application: Table of Contents

• Cover letter
• Personal statement
• Letter of intent
• Resume with headshot
• College transcript
• High school transcript
• Letter of recommendation from my mom
• My personal contact info-- includes my cell, office and home phone numbers, home address, parent's address, personal and work email addresses, twitter handle, okcupid username and social security number
• Maps of potential rides and territories
• My typical day-to-day schedule (so you can always find me)
• Secrecy Plan-- includes ideas for handshakes, door knocks, passwords and other coded forms of communication
• Drafts for uniforms-- includes formal, casual and wartime
• A brief yet comprehensive history of bicycle gangs in America
• Writing sample
• Recipes for cookies I know how to make (with photos)

How I came to know the beach and her special beauty

I would like to start with waking up at your house
because I’m not done thinking about it.

In the corner of your mouth I am
like balloons resting on the
hardwood floor of your living room
after a party.
Static energy
a quiet energy
anchoring my lips to your neck as I spill
into the nook of your arm and your chest

With eyes closed, even the light in this room
the air’s soft hands, the scent,
the blue-grey of your walls and
the pictures I know are hanging there
seem to summarize this city and its beach

How I understood the beach and her special beauty
when you told me about being there with James
on a day with sun

Later that night, you both bit your lips
as the hem of my dress rose when I lifted my arms up to dance
I noticed you in sitting in the booth in the bar
moodily sipping your third
gin and tonic under furrowed brows
mistook you for a character in a book.

I checked in with you at about 2am and
you said I was one of those party guests who makes a strong impression on people who have never met them before that night
we toasted to me over the hors d’ouevres on the coffee table

One morning, I found myself awake in the corner of your room,
And there I remain—trapped in the nook of your arm and your chest.

London 2012

There's nothing to do in this fucking city
except go to bars where my friends play music,

All of the televisions in all of the bars make me think of you.

I always imagine that you're shaving your beard

with your straight razor and brush And soon
you'll be critically eyeing yourself in your mirror 

one eyebrow raised, head turning left and right
as you comb your hair away from your face.

But that's why I like television, 

because it makes me think of you,

I know that whatever I'm watching is playing on a set somewhere near you

Even if you are not watching it

maybe your next door neighbor is

and they are close to you. 

Inspired, I pull my eyes away from the bar television and

I look for a picture to appear among the staged musicians 

I think about the pictures you will take this winter, when you will have snow

I imagine they will be stark but beautiful, impressive

blue and white with skeletal trees

You will know snow this winter and I will not

I bet experiencing a regular, annual snowfall 

is something that can really change a person. 

I yearn the most for things I can imagine but never possibly know

like a youth spent in Ohio or how good the music was at my parent's wedding.

To The Pretty Poets of the Windy City

— for Rachel

There is a certain emotion that feels like being on the verge of tears.

It is when you sense that you are beginning to better understand someone you’ve loved for a long time, without their knowledge or help.
This feeling is something scary that inspires me: something frightening and loud.
It is a feeling that cannot be cured by listening to punk rock and no folk music for six months. It is a feeling that demands to be explored.

This poem is about three things: traveling clichés, personal stuff, and how Rex and I got married. 

August 4th, 6:11 PM—This afternoon it poured and poured. There are so many people in this city and today they all got wet.

Introducing: Rex.
Rex noticed my white dress.
Rex watched me make deviled eggs in his kitchen.
Rex remembered the short conversation we had about Virginia Woolf and was seen last week in Myopic Books, purchasing a copy of To The Lighthouse.
Rex does not want to live in the same city as me.
Rex goes by a shortened version of his middle name. Rex was allowed to choose his middle name when he was 16, and he chose "Alexander".
If Rex could see me writing in my journal in this public airport terminal, it would be love at first sight. However, the likelihood of Rex writing poetry about me is pretty low. That's just the way things are.

Some days are filled with an inexplicable feeling of dread. I fear my pen will run out of ink before I have said everything I want to say, none of my clothes fit my tits the way I want them to, and I am able to think myself into a stomachache. I always say that if my reality were made into a photograph, anxiety would be the shadows-- just something you expect to see.

August 6th, 3:55 PM—I have been emotionally empty for quite some time now... for several years, and through several love affairs.

I do not like to sleep in public places unless that public place is a library. Some people cannot bear to sit down on a plane before it has taken off. Things will change, but not everything will change. The Universe is not to be trusted, but it can be your friend.

Rex was waiting for us on his porch, and he was the one who noticed my white dress.
Rex put his hand on my back as I lay belly-down in his bed.
A physic palm reader once told Rex that in a past life he was a hero of the Renaissance. 
Rex is not sure when he'll get his next haircut.
Rex saw my white dress and requested that I marry him in it.

You look out of a plane window and see a tiny version of a city you love. The plane tips, and the city disappears behind the wing before you've finished taking in the view.

The Two Times I’ve Dialed 911, or, I Can’t Believe We Still Hooked Up After Meeting That Sad Old Lady

The operator on the other end of your call to Emergency never sounds quite human. Their questions don’t sound like normal questions, they are mechanical, specifically designed to be understood under extreme pressure, to be easily and quickly answered. It’s easy to imagine that if you speak as they do, in layman’s terms, a conclusion ending in help will be possible. Reply to the operator’s questions in the same emotionless tone they ask them in, keep your head straight and deliver the facts. Their lack of empathy is calming, I guess.

The first time I had to call 9-1-1 was when my roommate, L—, fell out of her bunk in the middle of the night.She woke me up when she hit me on the way to the ground. I remember rising and feeling vague pain and confusion, and then finding L— on the ground. I quickly discovered that in her fall from the top bunk, L—  had hit her leg on the edge of my bed: the skin on her shin looked like a pint of strawberry ice cream with one long scoop spooned out of it. I laid her down on the floor, very slowly. We were both really scared. She could barely walk when they came for her but she hobbled down the long hallway to the elevator anyway, using my body as a crutch. I drove her in her car to the emergency room. There, they gave her 8 stitches.

Here is the part where I detach completely from whatever was grounded in reality in this piece

I had a dream we finally made out.

Good news-- I didn’t mind that you tasted like one million cigarettes or that your clothes and your hair smelled like them (I’ve actually always liked the smell of cigarettes) and anyway I figured you’d taste like them because you’re addicted to them and surely you’d just come from smoking one right before we started to kiss.

We had found ourselves alone in a room (a small, circular room) and, well, I had quit my job— something you remembered when you saw me standing across from you, I could tell from a nod in your head as you held the shape of my body in your eyes, it was you who asked “So you do want to do this?” You had known for quite some time that I had wanted you for quite some time.

In the moment I wanted to be strong, like... a femme fatale! like all of the women you have told me about, like that woman you dated for 15 years, before I was even born, but instead, as a little girl, I melted and sighed into your lips, I shrunk in stature like your spit was a tonic that said “Drink me, drink me, drink me.”

I felt that I wanted to be your toy (if you would accept me as one I would be one). You did, and there was nothing romantic about it. Nonetheless—Breathless. Breathless I became, breathless, as I always am. I drew myself away, trying to compose myself from here I start to invent as a woman, I grabbed the collar of your shirt, and clutching it (the collar), I thumped my fist against your shoulder and then there was a silence like ssssssssssssss until I said

“Don’t think you’re getting off that easy, bub.” 

Using the hold I had on your collar I pulled you closer Made it mean something because I knew you would hate that I Came at you With passion Washed away that demeanor of yours that Cool confidence Made you care Changed you In one motion With one act One oh, One sigh, oh yes oh sigh yes

October

I went into your room to grab a cup for a drink and I stopped to look at your bed,
head cocked with a hand on my hip.

The History of Sexuality (I swear to God) was open face down,
your neat shoes nearby on the floor, and a shirt was laid out,
as if you had considered wearing it but chose another.

The simple, deliberate nature of the still life reminded me of how you combed your hair before breakfast that morning, with intention, and how that previous night, you had read my tattoo right off of my skin, touching each word with your index finger, “Your very flesh shall be a great poem.” 

Your voice, normally so precise with finality was slightly slurred. We had drank a few beers that night.

Cigarette?

I like how you ask if I want to smoke a cigarette with you.

You look at me, kind of up from under your eye brows

You say, “Cigarette?”

“Yeah,”

Not because I like to smoke but

Because it sounds like you’re actually asking me

“Hey, you want some privacy?”

Yeah.

Electricity of nature

The closing of an umbrella,
a button being slipped through a hole of a sweater,
the turning of a lock shut with a key and
the way your body folds over mine.