The lovely chaos
of beginning
again.

Instead of 
drowning
I’ll grow
gills.

There is witchcraft
in food
the body 
is conscious 
of suffering
not just our own
magic is both
light and dark
how we feel
seems metaphysical
but
the body has
chemicals 
they are physical
they can be
clarified or
obscured
they can be
mixed with 
gentleness
or pain
so much arrives
in the witchcraft
of food.

Every connection we make
like an infinite ball of string unwinding,
we stretch ourselves further inward.

The lemons of our longing
for strangeness 
instruct us how to live.

Freedom gives
our buried lights
a chance
to illuminate us.

Where is it
inside
that the sun
of your body
rises?

I too
am a breaker
of chains.

Life itself is not governed
and does not imply
a need to monitor
nor standardize.

A mouth full of worry
demanded that we 
find a ship to jump from
and start again
and again
and again
as necessary.

If there was a way
to know the outcome
beforehand, I wouldn’t
choose to know it. 

If I were a body of water
I’d be an ocean
distorted by my own 
mind
into a lake. 

Our forest 
is long.
Its treetips
fragile
they bend 
in wind.
Longing is
vague and tall.
These trees 
can envy
and weigh
of grief.
Our forest 
is strong.

Some seasonal order
has taken over, like a tempest there
to hold me, too. Thin at first,
the wind gradually folding over
and over, and thunder, and rain,
a wrapper of unambiguous
dark, not akin
to sadness.

The dream of wilderness finds in it
domesticity, at times
on the road, passing rows of corn,
passing lush, sticky forest, cruising
down the coastal palms and the sea,
the road has an end, not always
the planned end, not always
the unplanned one. I began with

absence, though I’m silent
about it. I think of you often,
though less as the present
days keep on, and I wonder
what is true, and I wonder about
time. There is talk
about how we could live

in the present. Sleeping naked
like angels would, our interiors
emerging, our bodies floating up
like white smoke into an ever-distant sky
because the act was pure.

We know this is right
because of the lightness,
and the sense that grief would follow
could not impact its weight.
Love, love, love,
say it as if it will carry on in us
just the way it is now, ask if
its dissipation
is any different from
unearthing the heart’s light,
floating up, up, up.

I thought my breath
was the breeze
it felt like
fingertips

The house was falling apart. You know,
shutters dangling, closet door off its tracks, 
some wide blinking 

brown eyes through the jagged hole 
in the middle. Someone kicked it.
Chipping paint making Pangaeas

across the walls. I got lost 
peeling it like I would dead, 
sunburnt skin on my shoulders.

Leaks from where the roof was flat, 
a crack curving down the center
of the porcelain tub we used to

fill with hot water and soak 
together in overflowing bubbles
like nothing was 

wrong. Once I tried to blame
the hurricanes, but they never came,
only some heavy rain. The wind

had been calm for a long time. Some nights 
were empty, not just the
empty bottles around, beer,

some rum. Part of an old poem was taped
to the fridge. It said
the physical things come first

before you ripped it down. I learned 
about the difference between love 
and attachment from a book first

and then from you. If I could only
hate you
for kicking the closet door

that time you tried to 
kick my dog, 
for that time you kicked my dog.

Then she started hiding in the closet
every time you
raised your voice.

You even kicked 
the two baby lime trees
which I bought just before you moved in

and perched with sticks
until they were strong
enough to hold themselves up.

You never kicked me,
because as much as it might seem
like I mentioned the lime trees to serve

as a metaphor for me,
they’re not.
I left the day you threw

a glass jar of coconut oil at my face,
which was only a day after you started 
all the kicking.

I can’t say I didn’t 
cry a lot, or that it wasn’t excruciating 
to walk away and so fast. 

I did, and it was. 
But the way memory works 
is not so easy.

I still remember how you’d
hold me in your metal arms
like a magnet.