Shelter

I didn't know a man could be walls and windows
and a stucco ceiling, didn't know I'd be open
and allowed—a year so full of fuck and love
and orchids and clutch that I forget and remember
my horrors. Yes, this man's calves are the foyer
where comfort is finally possible, where I take off
my stiff jacket and let it drop, where I unlace
the black boots of recklessness, and every wrong boy
is history, something dull left out in the cold. Yes,
this man's arms are a staircase and his thighs
are hallways and his tongue is the sweet red carpet
rolling out to meet me. Yes, his ears are corners
and his toes are beams and his eyes are skylights. Yes,
yes, his lips are doors that close and open,
offering me this new view.





Swim

1.

My mother was calmly dying in the room
across the hall. She floated on her back,
her bed a raft with purple sheets.

I was more than dramatic, flailing my arms,
sinking, gasping for air; I wanted to drown
first—or so I said.

How are you going to live? she wanted to know.
I'm just the first in line, she told me.



2.

When night came I'd go away
and find a boy. I'd bring him
to the sand in front of our building
and promising nothing I'd offer up
everything: skin and teeth and lips
and breasts. Upstairs, her own breasts
were killing her. Sometimes I'd share
that information with my lover stranger.
I'd fill him in at the exact moment
my nipple met his lips—what a pale
and hungry ghost he was sucking.

It was enough to scare a boy
into his Levis and boxers—this one
I'm remembering trudged up the beach
without his belt or navy socks.



3.

Twice I was drunk and stumbled into her room.
I was uninvited, a foul smelling girl
in plaid pajamas. I rubbed her head
in the early a.m., my selfish wine mouth
on her cheek. Both times I woke her up.
Once she was visibly grateful, blowing a kiss
before bringing the blankets to her chin.
But her response was like cancer itself;
I didn't know what was coming.
I'm not dead yet, she said that second time.
Are you here to remind me I'm going?

4.

She'd been gone nine months
when I emptied her last packet
of cocoa into a cup. I was wrapped in a sheet,
sitting on her couch, missing her,
and my love sat down. After one quick tug,
we jittered into the kitchen—his lips sweet
and warm from chocolate, and I braced
against the cupboards with hope.



5.

Certain mornings I believe my dead mother
sent him—all of his ingredients: words and fears,
soft fingers, her baby girl hair. It's true,
she made promises in that purple bed
about a love she'd deliver from the grave.
It was nonsense, we both knew, a mother's early
goodbye. Still, when he stands
in what was once her bedroom
and that hair spills down his back,
I can only shiver and give and breathe and thank.



6.

I sit at my desk, and my mother is
and is not behind me. What's left
of my girl sits in a blue ceramic bowl,
bones and teeth now soft as cotton.
It's morning. I'm sipping coffee.
Outside this apartment that was once hers
not one patch of grass, just the sea, two boats
and one little swimmer, his head bobbing up
and under and up again.





The Crazies

Hey sweet boy, you, the one losing his mind on my couch. I want to climb inside there with the crazies. When one of us goes nuts we'll hide, sleeping like bears into the afternoon. So what, today it's your turn. It's nothing I haven't contemplated myself. Don't make a plan is all. If you buy a rope or threaten to fly, those taming boys with belts and jackets will come to take you away, and I want to keep you here, even like this, twisted in twos on my living room rug. Tonight, all night, the wind slaps at the door, the mirrors shake and tremble. On the balcony, ferns and candles slip from little round tables, and I will be your naked doctor girl. All night I've been holding onto your chest as if I can. You are blowing away right here inside this room. You soar from corner to corner. You say you're detached. You say I'm an object. Oh, Sweetness, I am anything but solo. I will anchor you to my sheets or climb upon your back for the ride. My dead mother didn't believe in insanity, even when I brought it to the breakfast table, my hand swimming in the hot oatmeal, a wolf-girl howling. You and I know about marbles, losing them, and synapses and cures and the wolves inside our heads who will not let us go. I look around the room at the colors I've chosen: black and blue. The first time you were here you said, Hey sad girl, your whole world is a bruise.