tellmumimokay

I am collecting fragments of myself
not knowing how to piece them together
image by image or word by word

delicately
constructing me
like a first kiss.

Let’s begin with:

blond hair back-lit by the sun and how
I lost myself in the malachite patterns
of half-closed eyes and papery skin that
glowed like a Chinese lantern when we kissed

on Thursdays we listened to Elliot
Smith, that CD you told me was too
depressing to play in the car

I’m sorry I was relieved when you left
me, even though indelible white lines
across my thighs tell a different story

a story I keep
in a tent
in my heart, a story
that time can’t touch

a kitchen scene
a brutal script
of words that stick to skin

and then the counting of sugar cubes in
an attempt to stop the slow sinking of
what you said into marshmellowy membranes
that shelter my brain –

but I know now that life can be cold, I wait
for the moments that aren’t, moments of
transit, of bliss when a laugh becomes a cackle

I’m sorry that you don’t understand the
things I write, I like that you try though
especially the poem where I talk
about myself as an empty space
existing only to fill
but I’m not
sure with what

I feel stuck beneath this silent sky
impenetrable and tight like my father’s
office shirt, maybe tomorrow there will
be time for me to say the right things
but for now, could you take me home?

Because nobody else will.