I don’t like people.  I love them.  That’s why I remain aloof from so many people.  Love is a lot of trouble to go through.  Some people aren’t worth the trouble.  

I Trusted You

I always trust the fall.  Time of year and time of feeling.  Life burning gold.  I like touching the pretty passion fire, because it always proves hot.  And I don’t mind the burns, the scars, the dark flecks on my winter white skin.  Trustworthy proof of a time and a feeling.  I feel safe falling in love in the fall.  Free falling as I please.  There will be snow to cushion and numb me when I hit the ground.  So kiss me like 6:30p.m. sunlight on the trees before I grow another ring.  

Write for Me

Write on me.  Make me art.  Make me something to think about.

Fairy Tale Stars

It was the summer before life started.  Or, at least, that’s what we thought then, when we were still so young that we thought life begins at a particularly well-timed intersection of choices and dreams.  My best friend and I were lying with our stomachs flat on the pavement of an empty parking lot.  The ground was still warm in spite of the fact that it hadn’t seen the sun for hours.  Outside the parking lot, trees and hills climbed up the sky, towards the moon and the stars -- we didn't believe in heaven.  We were talking about everything that might happen once I moved to Chicago, but really we were writing fairy tales.  And, really, after I left that parking lot, the best stories I would ever write would carry the hard heat of that pavement in their words.  And really, everything I would ever love, I would love in stubborn opposition to that place that I had climbed up and out from, like those trees that had climbed up to touch the stars.  And I realize that I wasn’t trying to climb away from where I was from, but what had happened to me there and I realize that bad things can happen anywhere – and they did.  Now, six years later in New York, I don’t see stars at night; the city’s tallest buildings just scrape the blank slate black sky.  

Hotel Love

I used to experience love like a hotel bed.  It was the only place I had to sleep, but I was restless because it wasn’t mine and there were other hotel beds I could sleep in.  And sex used to be easy because love was just a hotel bed – a place to lay my head for a while before moving on, temporary, surreal.  But I always wanted a home.

Missed Out

Sometimes, on my morning walk to the subway, I find myself still tasting the bad, burnt yet overly sweet coffee you used bring me every morning.  I imagine I still feel the glaze of all those cheese danishes stick to my finger nails and slide into my stomach, where it is probably still residing.  On my happiest mornings, when the sun touches my cheeks and I finally feel at home, I miss the feel of your white comforter on my bare skin and the way the sun came through cracks in the blinds and the way I shielded my eyes with the curve of your arm.  I miss being naïve enough to think that the simple things are the easiest to hang on to.  I miss being young enough not to fear the delicate simplicity of waking up beside someone and not rushing out door.  

Change and Movement

I have kissed men just for the story of it.  I have woken up in strange places after chasing the fleeting feeling of adventure.  I have left people and places just to have a sense of movement.  I have left looked for myself in other people’s bed sheets.  And I never even wanted to change.   But I did. I learned the best stories are the ones I don’t have to chase and sometimes the greatest adventure is waking up in a familiar place.  And the best place to look for myself is in my own sheets.