Lips

Despite their fury,

these hands are to accustomed to creation

to wipe your memory from my skin

They cannot wipe your lips from 

where they rested against mine,

cannot remove with their violence

what you impressed in them in love,

and it doesn’t matter how many nights

I put myself to sleep

by guiding them inside,

they do not push as deeply as you did, as you do.

I cannot hide from my flesh’s callings—

my body misses you.

—B. 

I’m going to take off all of my clothes. I’m going to crawl into a sweater. I’m going to make myself tea. I’m going to get under my covers. I’m going to spend the rest of my night weeping.

You should borrow the inside of my head. It’s nice in here.

—B.

Withdrawal

I withdraw my feeling tendrils of creeping

sensation to my

center to fill up the gaping cavity everything else

failed to fill with anything but desolate disappointment.

—B.

Done

We are done, the second I can spit out

my monologue, my thousandth-times

rehearsed, blurry-eyed, I-need-to-say-this.

I don’t know how it took me so long to see that you were using me, that you are, that you think I’m pretty or whatever or you like me in your bed or whatever and that you can not worry about how I feel even though I feel as thousand times more than you could, that you are a liar, you lied, you lie with your smile and your false kindness as you kiss me. You make me happy and you know it, you know you can make me happy with an I-love-you and it will be enough. The things that make me valuable, being low maintenance, being patient and long-suffering in love, oh, you take subtle advantage of these doe-eyed confessionary kisses, because you can kiss so easily, you can manage to leave me waiting for you at the beach beneath a weeping sky and love me later. No, no, no. I am done. 

—B. 

How I’d like to be.

—B.

Careful

Be careful, darling—

you don’t care,

and you’re beginning to

show it.

—B. 

E. E. Cummings

i’ll tell you a dream i had once i was away up in the sky Blue,everything:
a bar the bar was made of brass hanging from strings (or)someThing i was
lying on the bar it was cOOl i didn’t have anything on and I was hot all
Hot and the bar was

   COOl
O My lover,

                there’s just room for me in You
my stomach goes into your Little Stomach My legs are in your legs Your
arms
      under me around; my head fits(my head)in your Brain—my,head’s
big
she(said laughing
                        )with your head.all big

Think of Me

I imagine that you must be sleeping, somewhere,

breathing your beautiful into scratchy sheets,

and when your eyelashes graze the cotton white

and your fringing darkness brushes past those

fragrant fibers, which imbue the scent of you,

and every image of your night before springs together

in a winding chain of happiness and drags

the corners of your bitten lips into a smile, 

a hand will rise from its place, draped like Roman silk

across your back, to wipe a fallen lash from your cheek.

I imagine that somewhere you are drifting, lovely,

into the heaven of your happy thoughts,

and— 

me?

No, I think of that, you think

not.

—B.