autumn rising

fall rushes me into nesting mode: these previously
unspoken (unmentioned) urges propelling me toward
coupledom.
which is funny, i think,
because i have another half (i think).
and the pumpkin patch lathered me with dust, dirt
shadowing my face and clouding my eyes but dirt
is not deceptive.

she had unnatural dark red hair
spiked and faltering at the back
like when i had my first stereotypical lesbian haircut
(also an unnatural shade of red,
though mine favored fire engines, not
pomegranates) and didn't realize
i had to style past the top of my head.
black long sleeved shirt
tucked under a dark grey polo. dark jeans.
calm if stoic expression, and eyes that sparkled even from where i sat,
my ass twitching on a bale of hay.
i didn't exactly mean to stare her down
but she reminded me of a woman i loved
ages ago, a woman that i could have stayed with
if she hadn't been unstable, a bitch, and ultimately
sexually incompatible. so when i say that
i didn't mean to stare i actually mean
i did. and she looked back, surrendering to my super lesbionic
power of eye contact, so i looked away because i recently realized
i am coy, or something like it.
i looked back
as she caught my eye and looked away.
i meant to smile but i forgot how.

dirtier still, my blackberry's screen said:
1 missed call, 1 new voicemail.
i guessed who it was.
i was wrong. and i hesitated to listen
because we were supposed to talk two weeks ago
and when time like that passes, with us,
tones shift and claws unfurl.
but: a pet name, a sullen mouth;
call me when you have time.

and i don't have time for anyone but myself.

the weather turns around me. the breeze
swaddles my bare neck, my eyes blink
against the traipsing autumn sun. i felt most alive
surrounded by burnished corn stalks
and tipping pumpkins. it feels strange coming home
to a human-less house despite my inordinate
love for independence. i am almost worried that
i am too independent, too accustom to my own heartbeat
and pillow-strewn bed, that i won't be able to nest
whenever the nesting feels it's time to begin.

and my cat has been sleeping
in the same spot on the end of bed
for four hours.
i wish i, too, could be as complacent
when i stumble over something i love.

what i crave / i will never show

tonight my sin soaked in blue moon,
and my skin trembled beneath smoke-free lights.
i have yet to figure out
what you cannot see in me--
because somehow,
flailing around my relationship missteps: i still
know my value, know who
i am.

but i suppose you are not meant to be,
and it was a simple slip of the tongue, notsomuch
of the freudian sort,
when a.s. called me your name
instead of my own
to get my attention tonight.
a slip, another mistaken misstep,
another nothing added to the already amassed
rolling bobbin, what we are is
unraveling, stripping to nothing more
then we ever were.

because i know it's nothing.

and i don't know why i stay-
because i am afraid to be alone, because
i fear she is the end of it all and i may never find
another female loving female,
because this is absurd and i am already maybe
laughing at myself.

where everything i am is unsteady.
the garbage cans trailing my stride to the curb,
lolling drunkenly on the sidewalk,
my own steps smeared by two beers
and a table full of coworkers that i love,
a job i accept,
and a workplace i've come to abhor.

i took on yahoo
last week. the night of riesling
and a thumb of xanax.
i offered another unecessary apology
and el sotano accepted. and i forget our conversation
but it rings positive in my memory,
rings with more possibility and a shit-ton
of i cannot do this again.

a funny thing.
knowing you deserve more, and better of more,
but being unable to mobilize
and go awol on your memory,
your busted shatters of possibility and hope-
it is enough to stay deployed in the flimsy recesses
of your own troubled mind.

and i was brave / but you didn't know

weeks ago, i went to see melissa ferrick.
and i feel in love with her opening act. it was easy
because she was self-deprecating and had a beautiful voice, lyrics
that flittered past skin-deep, penetrating pieces of fragments of my shattered
everything where nothing
could make sense but sense itself.

tonight is a night, for me, full of riesling and xanax
because i cannot clear my mind but more importantly
my jaw is throbbing and there is no escape
because every time i stop myself from clenching my teeth
i think of you
and then i clench again
and the pattern continues, unlocking all my memories
and all the could-bes and maybe might still becomes.
but i know you don't want me as i want you
and even if you do
the way you hide it could shake me for years (as i guess it
already has), decimate my every caustic sense, the things that
work and the ideas that float. and my skin
floats, my hands are full of helium and i have misplaced
my legs. i don't care past the image of you and me,
the rattled, makeshift escalated chorus of coulds and woulds.

and this is my right now.
this perpetual itching ache, the daggers deflecting my heart,
and the unsteady waiver of my hands, hours later.
because they shook for forty-three minutes after i told you
that we were writing poems in class, and it would be quiet. you were hiding (my
face to yours, our palms barely reaching- we are
so terrifyingly alike that it breaks me apart and rips me into shape-shifting
glued shards of you[me] who this is and who we want to be) and your presence
was visceral, tangible, a veritable shake
to the core, i cannot stop drinking this wine even though
my heart
has returned to my chest's cavity, to its rightful place,
limping back from its sometime residence near my toes.
i cannot tell if my heart:
does it soar or does it fall,
dilating and storming through my body at the mere shock
of seeing you before me.

i do not yet understand
what exactly it is about you-
if it IS something or if this is a magical prelude
i have designed in my psyche, an occupation away
from the dismantling servitude of reality. maybe i write
best when i am drunk on riesling and high on xanax, and maybe i write
just as terribly well when i am trembling in syntax
of maybe-love and could-be more than lust.

i have the right idea
but i cannot whisper its fragments into your ear
because we cannot get close enough to see
what all there is we harbor.

my boat is sanctioned in the deepest of lakes;
your yacht sings solo softly in the saturated sea.
we could meet in the middle, not your ground nor
mine. we could spin, there, ribbons of fairytale
and dip our toes into the dazzling wisps of water.
i could swim in you for days.

you startle my senses.
i have broken pens and letters over this deaf infatuation.
i was told to exorcise you from me. exorcise the demons, you wicked
angel. i laughed today.
and my god, your body. your rounding, warming, malleable form.

i cannot recall my first name because this person at the keyboard
is not who i think i ever am.

i said today that i would make you a powerpoint:
"reasons why you should love me." but love is deceit.
love you, i would. adore you, i would.
the powerpoint would have pictures, and i would write you
a poem.
because the obvious amount of poems that i have already crafted
for you is not obvious, because you don't know of them.
which, i guess, is why i told you today:
"come down. it's quiet. we write."
you didn't come down, and i knew you wouldn't, but it's for the best
because forty-three minutes later:
my hands still shook and my breath still evaded me
as my heart thumped into my ankles
and i wish i could tell you.