You are the mistake I want to make
I will wrap myself in your red flags
and let you peel them off
one silk layer at a time
You are the regret I want to have
I’ll bind you in my caution tape
lay on a bed of warning signs
cold metal against warm skin
cools your burning in my eyes
You are the fucked up mess
I want to roll around in
like a mud happy dog
drenched in your scent
I will not shake you out
How do you unsense me?
(First published in East Jasmine Review)
for my birthday
This is where I don’t know what’s next
this is where I get lost in the desert
forty years of circle wandering
This is where I try to fill the cracks
this is where I see how much I can fit
how many pages I can write
how many nights of alcohol
pushing limits where I thought I’d stop
the line I wouldn’t cross
This is where I close my eyes and lay back
in the thick sea salt floating
underneath stars I can never count
This is where I stop
naming anyone friend or lover
There is where I keep stirring
the increasing mess of me
dissolve the powder
pudding-thick and ready to serve
This is where I am the forest fire and
the arsonist and the fireman
mask wearing and sweating smoke
This is where the word you
is cut out in tiny rectangles
and collected in bags for confetti
where I forget what clocks I am watching
what timeline I had to follow
all the things called age appropriate
This is where I am done
and done and done knowing
that I ever knew
I love the teeth of your love
how you pit-bull deep
into the flesh of loving
How you make shrines
in the empty spaces,
abandoned apartments
Shrines to former residents
of borrowed books and toiletries
envelopes full of photographs
and letters in pen
How you never fill
the same space with new
but keep building out
expand the frames and floors
How you know when to change the locks
and when to nail it shut
I love how you calculate
estimate the risk
How you trust
the unnamed algorithm
the intuitive push, flashing “Yes,
love this one, let that one in!”
How soft your wrought-iron grip
holds every name tight
each face, its own story
each moment, a glass in your pane
How you refuse to argue
about the wrong
or right way to love
I love how so much of it matters
how you will forgive
as many times
as they will call
and ask for it
How you defend this weakness
with the expense of wasted time
Your time-to-give being
your love currency
not words, not gifts,
not your doing-for-me
But your minutes and hours
your speak to me, eat with me
your listen and watch with me
sit in this space of air
I breathe with me is love
I love how love-greedy you get
How you collect time
and stuff it in bags and boxes
shove it on shelves, in closets
covering walls, blocking doorways
in empty apartments
You guard-dog this house
an unapologetic hoarder
How you refuse to purge it
refuse to loosen your grip
Set shrines in windowsills
light blood candles
There is always room
for more
2-3-14
Originally published in Silver Birch Press, Self-Portrait Series.
Also listen on Soundcloud.
You, a landscape sloping
down into soft valleys
where I trace your bare
terrain outlined in moonlight,
I rest on your dark side
how you speak clearest
in silence still as mountain tops
I, lying in your slant night,
an eager traveler pulling
at your dawn, sunrise us—
turn and move earth in me.
First published in Cliterature.
You can follow the link and read “The Reef of Clouds” published in this lovely journal, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly. I had the honor of reading it with Raquel Reyes-Lopez and many other talented poets on May 31st at the Santa Catalina Branch of the Pasadena Public Library.
I saw a girl at Target, she was
me at twenty-one years old.
She had my blond hair and
simple black-lined eyes,
a red vest and black band
shirt from Joy Division’s
Unknown Pleasures.
Iconic jagged white
mountain lines I once
plastered to my purse.
The image is a badge, I know
immediately, she is cool
in the way I was cool
working at Target at twenty-one.
I want to tell her we got
bigger plans, even if you can’t
see it now, and that boy,
who torments your soul,
is just passing by. I want
to tell her we end up alright,
and all that confusion might
not get clear, but it settles.
And all that sadness, the
endless sadness fades away,
but I give her a slight grin
and muster, “I like your shirt.”
I don’t know how else to say it,
so I pay and leave for home.
4-9-13
Originally published in East Jasmine Review, 8-1-13
Sarah Thursday 