Inhale the yawning frost
let it gather and collect
beside your sleepy heart
drowsy from neglect.
Rest your ghostly frame,
hush her muddled drawl.
You say you're feeling numb
but I know you feel it all.

Your soul is like a vagrant,
slinking through the alleys
of exposed cat ribcages
and rotting mangoes
and maggots lacking wings.
You watch a rabid mutt
peel flesh from the bone
of something long decomposed.
You're gathering
a stack of phonebooks
a spool of cobwebs
for a nest to keep you warm,
momma bird.
But don't you know,
that I could be your home?

I'm back.

For a long time I felt like I was unable post here because the man I was dating was obsessively checking to see if I had leaked any of my thoughts into this blog. This place has always been a refuge- a place to write and release and heal and ramble. But I couldn't ramble about my love-life insecurities and my anxiousness to leave and my suffocating, sorrow-ridden self in a public place. It would have given me away long before it was actually over. After that, I was nervous to write here. I would sit down with a hot cup of tea between my knees and stare at the little blinking cursor begging me to spill, and my hands would tremble and my pulse would quicken and I would always, always end up dumping out my cold cup of untouched tea and pick up a book to mindlessly lose myself in. I couldn't write because I refused to wallow.  Life, since then, is blissful. It's healthy, you know? I live the healthiest, happiest life. I wake grudgingly, but happily, at an ungodly hour when the sky is still dark and the streets are empty save for vagrants and troubadours.  I brew coffee and read the paper in the quiet, sleepy hours of my workplace and set out hot steaming cups of caffeine to the addicts and early-wakers of my city. I walk to school, my bookbag slung across my chest and my water bottle swaying slightly with my footsteps. I learn, I buy a cup of tea, I learn again, I buy another cup of tea. I come home to naked bricks and unreachable ceilings and best of all, a tall and open-armed man that laughs when I lick his face like a kitten and kisses me with a fervor equitable to Howard Roark's architectural desire. Life is good, and I'm back. 

(Official) Change of Address.

Safeguard all that is important to you. Take your yellow curtains with the lace silhouettes down. Neatly fold your clam-colored sheets and the quilt your mother gave you for your birthday and place them in a cardboard box. Press your fingers to the spine of each beloved book and carry them to the elevator. Place them in your backseat. Glance at the mailbox with the tiny numbers and your name written on a wrinkled piece of yellow paper. Disassemble the cradle of sleeping bones. Pack it up, pack it up, pack it up. Withdraw your possessions into protection. Not a trace of you remains here. Do not be afraid when you close the door to a hollow room. Slink to your knees inside your loft that smells like fabric softener, your loft of scattered underwear and exposed bricks. Count the neatly stacked boxes of buttons and threads and bubble-wrapped ceramics. Feel your lover's hand slide into yours and squeeze. Become cognizant of that feeling- that sedated, placid, extremely blissful feeling associated with home. Feel a smile spread across your face and the laugh lines in the corners of your eyes crinkle because your eyes are smiling too. These boxes mean something to you, but not what they used to. 

Day One and Two.

Three hundred and six point three miles. Sixteen limbs. Eight eyes. Forty eight pairs of ribs. Forty one dollars of pretzels, cinnamon pecans, and pull n peel twizzlers. Three sun hats. Two queen beds. One magnet in one black bag that relentlessly demagnetized six hotel keys. Two frozen custards. One hazelnut truffle. Two hundred UV altering nail polish bottles. Two games of March white elephant: one XXL pirate coloring book, four broken crayons, ninety two temporary tattoos, two pink piglets with quarter slots. SPF 100. One photo booth. One beef chimichanga from Pancho and Lefty's. One apple empanada. One order of fried ice cream. Two tacos. Four hours and fifty four minutes for one degree of weather change. One chemistry exam in seven minutes, missed two. One phantom sunburn. Two days left. Please stall Thursday.

Stairs rattle
on the way up
to fill a coffee cup, ink
and batteries for the oracle.
Every tier is parallel
to four skeleton legs
where they tread,
silver with disease,
slowly eroding,
as the top of the staircase remains untouched
however desperate the stride.
This sun god mythology
serves only to undercut
a wilting Inca sky
under which rising flares
one cream one gold
peel the cracking heels
from steps caked
with buttercups. 

Typical Morning.

There is a piece of cellophane on the floor. There is a half eaten bran muffin still folded up in the filmy outer paper on the counter next to me. A drop of cream that fell from the cold, silver canister when I filled it. A coffee bean. A paper clip. A few grains of chai powder. This is my morning job. Two refrigerators hum beside me. A shiny register. A yellow cylinder of whip cream. Vanilla and cinnamon and hazelnut syrups. A cup of blueberry tea between my knees, a steady stream of steam slowly rising from the pill shaped opening. A darling man downstairs, making our lunch. It feels much earlier than it is, and I miss sleeping in.

Desert Sleep.

I dream I am
a pale saguaro.
Shedding needles
pierce a yellow rind
shriveling
at my ankles.
Her seeds,
stale and gaping
in a nest
of terra cotta.
I recall
waking up
in a desert bog
with sand beneath
my fingernails.
The morning
reeked of sleep
and lemonade. 

Hello, Again.

Hello, again. Hello, owl eyes. It feels like months since I've been here. It's like returning to a familiar room that you've been away from. Dust has gathered on the eaves and rose scarves are moth infested and you spot a faded book you used to keep under your pillow, so you pick it up and delicately turn the pages, thin with age and slightly transparent. You find petals and aspen leaves pressed between the letters and you remember the smell of the summer when you walked around your culdesac, barefoot, plucking one petal from every garden and one leaf from every tree of every yard, and you placed them in the thickest book you could find. Russian olive trees and hot tar and scones from the carnival down the street, you remember. You whisper to the petals and dehydrated, brittle stems, wake up, wake up. I have missed you, Afternoon Tea.

The winter break has been the loveliest of reprieves and textbook hiatuses. It's given me a chance to take in my new home. My new home with the oddly shaped bedroom nooks and tiptoe balcony and ceiling air vents. It's taken me a few weeks to adjust to the modern architecture of this fifth floor and lament on my second story fire escape with the parking lot window scene. But the expanse of time that I've acquired over the past three weeks has given me the chance to find shortcuts. If I pour cream into the bottom of my cup before I pour my coffee, I won't have to use a spoon. If I take sixteen stairs to Barnes and Noble on my break, instead of turning the corner for Starbucks, I can order cinnamon tea in half the time and still have twelve minutes to read in the break room on thick leather benches. If I sit in the basin of my bathtub, and curl myself up so that I'm nearly touching the drain, I reduce the risk of cutting my ankles with a new razor. If I coat the kitchen counters in fig-scented cleaner, and use three paper towels to clear debris, I eliminate lackluster streaks that change shape at odd angles. If I fall asleep curled into the warmth of the body next to me, I dream of feeling yellow and little jars full of buttons and fragile things. Most beautiful of all, about the break, is that I've somehow lost track of myself. Hours and days have somehow vanished from beneath my precisely planned schedule books and minute alarms. I found myself wondering what day of the week it was, how long I had been lying in bed reading, and at what hour we turned the lamp off. A new semester begins.

Found an early, bitter snow
on your barren outer piece
so I peeled away the flakes
like dead cells from the fleece.
My teeth became the seeds
and my gums became a shell
while I warmed an early frost
and your swollen brothers fell.