he was drawing on the table top
with gems of sugar and lines of mustard
and a knife -
he was laughing, watching me move
not-so-gracefully around the floor,
re-arranging,
re-cleaning,
re-naming.
he was making something i couldn't see;

when he got up, he kissed my cheek -
told me that he'd marry me.
i laughed. told him to buy a ring.
turned two times around, never saw him
leave;

too late to tell the truth.
but maybe it wasn't too late, just too ignoble;
even if he were joking, it would be my ideal.
even if HE is something i have always fought against -

it was only when i looked back at the table
and saw a perfect recreation of dancing, imperfect me,
that i realized maybe he was serious.

feminism vs chauvinism

the carpet
was turning
to static electricity.

combining blood seas
and fly greys
creating a picture
of smiling apathy

making you seem like a shadow in the reflection of a doorway. impeccably invisible. some shouting -

he's shouting at you.
and she, she is moving behind,
quieting the crowd.

"daddy, maybe"

i'd say i could forgive you
if Newton's laws of fusion
were logically probable -

maybe i'd forgive the accident,
maybe i'd forgive your God-forsaken star,
maybe i'd forgive your de-part-ure;

but maybe i'd ask more of you
than you'd ever have to give.
maybe i would ask you to put down

THE BOTTLE
before it was too late.
maybe you'd listen between

walls made of legos
and doors made of logs.
maybe you'd smile back at my 6-year-old self.

but maybe to forgive you
i'd have to forgive myself first.

she wrote it on the back
of a crumpled recycled napkin:

morse code
sign language
braille

she read it in the print
of a leopard's skin
infested with hypothetical maggots

it wasn't legible.
but legibility, he said,
was a tire stuck in wet asphalt,
"cemented to communism";

he was lying to himself.
communism was his favorite past-time,
sucking the not-so-hypothetical utters
of a not-so-realistic cash cow.

but he wasn't important.
only you were, sitting in
that crystallized blue booth,
smiling at me, deviously,
removing strands from your eyes, while you

wrote your thoughts on the back
of that crumpled, recycled napkin.

product of tweaking

the truth: something i never believed in,
but your smile that night rang, rang, rang
the bell -

twisting the pieces of my veins together.
your hand, my waist, my hand, your cheek
too incidental to be noticed
and too powerful to be forgotten

but now, product of little blues
crossed for emphasis and inflicted
with the 111 of conformity

begs to differ, offering up solutions
for how i could possibly make you understand
and how i could

possibly make you...
(leave it be, leave it be, leave it be,
but the conscience is much quieter

than the instinct, which says run
to you, which screams movie
romance,

which screams one day,
one day, one day, because a smile
like that is too much to give away)