"  

All the poems I’ve been writing lately are either
apologies or confessions or ways to negotiate
with the demons inside by laying myself out naked
and seeing which part of me they’d like
as a sacrifice.

Last year they took my lungs.
The year before, my mind.

I blame my childhood epilepsy on an earthquake
that I stole from San Francisco,
and ever since I’ve tremor-proofed my bones
so that each heartbeat doesn’t break me
during the night.

The other day I told someone that I never meant
to save a life with my poem.

I lied.

All of these are just ways to keep my own soul away
from its noose.

I know what it’s like to try to give yourself
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
when you’ve drowned in the pool of your skin,
and I know what it’s like to want to scream out
Help
only to realize that you’re out in an ocean
that everyone has heard of but no one
knows to name.

I’m writing this now because everyone’s sadness is a different story
and people keep mistaking theirs for something more beautiful
than another’s.

But if you cradle your heartbreak between your palms —
if you whisper to it, coddle it,
let it grow and suckle on your breasts,
all you’re doing is giving life to something
that’ll slowly destroy you.

All you’re doing is bringing glow to its cheeks
and making its eyes brighter,
while yours dim,
dim,
are gone.

Don’t hold sadness against you like you’ve given
birth to something beautiful. Don’t let it
hang onto your neck and kiss the soft spot underneath
your chin, while you, in turn, reconsider the validity of the
bridge signs that tell you Please.
Life is worth living.

Because everyone is breaking in a way I can’t understand
and the most I can do is unravel my skin slowly
and slowly and slowly
and weave it into something
that I can wrap around another human being
when the nights are too dark
for them to see the whites of their own eyes.

  "

"  

Dear Samantha,
I’m sorry
we have to get a divorce.
I know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain:
it’s not you.
It sure as hell isn’t me.
It’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects do.
I love you… far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our species.
I saw the way you looked at the waiter last night.
I know you would never DO anything, you never do but…
I saw the way you looked at the waiter last night.

Did you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same: when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again.
If either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. Now that… is dedication.

After Elizabeth and I broke up, we spent three days dividing everything we had bought together - like if I knew what pots were mine - like if I knew which drapes were mine - somehow the pain would go away.
This is not true.

After two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down. While he still has control over his motor functions
he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a gift.
She then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes,
spooning every morsel into her mouth.
She wastes nothing. Even the exoskeleton goes.
She does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed them. Now that… is selflessness.

I could never do that for you.

So I have a new plan: I’m gonna leave you now.
I’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices, I hope you do the same.
I will jay walk at every opportunity,
I will steal things i could easily afford,
I will be rude to strangers,
I hope you do the same.
I hope reincarnation is real,
I hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures,
I hope we are reborn as flies,
so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.

  "

"   At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze.   "