To Skate On Sun

- Bravery

is a thread, among other fabrics.

- When I chose to return, I knew
that I would need to learn the language
of the seamstress
the ever-fitting
the mother
the all gone
if I were to speak of staying.

- I was 15, and he was
a crescent of what I
could fit.
I held it beneath
the feather flesh of my cheeks,
suffocated many a moon,
revived it
and still walked home
alone.

- The next day 
the phone rang
too late. Mommy
swept the call up
in all her knowing,
and sent me to read
the Haggadah, the
all weathering, the
testament of the orator.

- I was 15 and I told
him of a home I could
not cultivate with my bare
hands. It was a lie I
told my belly to keep 
it full. He believed it
though, took my full
belly in his hands - 
made a mockery of
my calling winds.

- That summer we
hugged the block
together. We were both
15. I held
ten times his weight
in both my pockets
and sold my
heavy smile,
my messenger eyes.
I wanted to tell
over
and over again
of The Haggadah
of how I
birthed his story
every day
and never worried of going
down for it.

The ignition. The bloodletting of summer. Of eve. The simmering in a body of electrons. The tug of an hour. The want that knocks at the screen door. The opening. The breach of threshold. Your hands, the warm shadow of them.

That bottle of Adderall. The night the light caught up to us. The left of reason. The reason. The bleaching of a freeway. The clock and its cultured humming. The walls. So many of these walls. The ringlet of echoes. The stretching of stay. The stay. The overstay the come back the leave behind

the tomorrow. The bridge is built for the goer and the coming but mostly for the gone. What if the all of you that was left were this magnet, this glycemic compass, those silver morals, that clef star, that heavy

thumping

that

thumping

and still no where

to reserve the

sound?

= I am writing this poem

small.

I thought of little

rainbows happening in

the dark and didn’t

want any of those to be

this poem.

= With you I am so

much of an ocean.

= With you, I am

a barrel ladening

someone else’s secret.

= I am borrowing too many

a heart

for this poem. I would

use mine,

but with all the foreign

maintenance —

= I think this poem should

bleed out. I think you are

Louisiana with a league of 

moons. I think this poem

should bleed out. I have a

body mulling in sterile 

medicines,

in muddy waters,

in so little patience. 

I think this poem should

bleed out.

= I think I am still an

ocean, but a small

small ocean, like

an encyclopedia

that can only 

understand its self.