Notches

We are made in the dark,
swimming, growing nauseatingly
slow. It is not worth
it. Everyone had a terrible childhood.
How do you deal with such bigness
in such a small space?
How do you tell a child they will
never see their friends again
in a way they understand?
You sit up front,
and turn up the rising
percussion against their gasping,
ragged breaths.

Now, she is playing a piano
big enough for a blue whale,
and the music makes you want
to cry
until the color is gone from your eyes.

He is holding his guitar
in the same way he would wrestle
a baby alligator.
You want to be his amp,
screaming, receiving
signals.
It makes you
want to cover yourself
in tattoos
and never worry
about wearing a wedding dress.

One night, you feel
a shifting within.
Things cannot be compared
anymore,
and you delicately wrap
a brown leather belt around
your neck,
and listen to the sound
of a truck backing up outside,
bleating like a large tropical bird.

How To Develop Photos

Step one:
Close the door behind you,
and turn off all the lights.
Begin sweating, and hearing
things that are probably
motions of a serial killer,
waiting, somehow seeing.
Think of your mother and what she is
doing right now; the way she says
the word “pillow”; the large
cardboard dollhouse she made you
when you contracted chickenpox.
Think about the way your cat looks
like a fat, striped egg
when she tucks her paws underneath.

Step two:
Begin developing -
you should already have mixed
the chemicals and have them ready.
You can turn on the lights now,
and begin cursing
as you spill fixer on your
new grey peacoat and remember
that the girl you are completely
obsessed with hasn’t looked at you
recently. Decide not to eat lunch
today, afterall.

Step three:
After washing the negatives for ten minutes,
unroll them from the spool
and see that they are completely
blank -
as vacuous as the face
of your ex-lover when you told them
this time,
you were really leaving.

Lovesong with A Hairshirt

While the cat licks my hands
as if they are an extension
of her own small body
(her love is critical and harsh),

you eye your watch,
wondering how many
more years
you have to stay with me
before they won’t call you
a quitter.

You laugh with the babysitter,
hand her a small check.
I can sense warmth radiating
off of her, like a package
fresh off the postal truck
in the summer.
I admire her pale hinges,
silent muscles,
secret organs.

I want to have daughters
wrapped up in church
dresses, bound with
large ribbons. I want
to attend
their pizza parties
and see the red lipstick
on the muzzles of their teachers.

Two deer are in the median
on the way home,
stuck
with metal between them
and their fleecy dens,
in a place they were
never supposed to be.
To think, there are places
we couldn’t reach if we tried.

Chincoteague

I look through the bottom of my glass,
through the crescent of water,
at the girls with the legs
of newborn thoroughbreds.
I will never see them naked.
Tan, thinly-muscled stems
trotting them home, wrapping around
the waist of some man.

Tonight will be a night of loss.
You used to ask me if I would ever leave
you, and I would tell you,
no, not until you are done with me.

I hid my hand in your hair,
a mourning dove in its nest,
and thought about being
cut loose -
a balloon, rising until
I became only a pinpoint
of color that made your eyes water
to look for.

35th Birthday

The cake I made is still sitting
on the table,
wedges of it gone.
Last night, I dreamed of
white frosting
on your lips, your pink
tongue like a feather.

I try to feel your presence
in the house this morning,
but you are gone,
out in the slow autumn rain,
your brown hair becoming fuzzy.

Over and over,
flipping open
the cover of the book you gave me
reveals the same thing -
your almost illegible handwriting:
you slay me.

In my dream, you kissed me,
frosting and feather and all,
and my wife appeared -
she stood in the doorway,
silent, watching.