The Idea of Insects in my Linens
in the peripherals of the sensory jelly ball
which rests wildly in my skull,
I have seen, to my horror, tiny shadows dashing across
my sheets.
but the idea of insects in my linens
becomes less horrible as
I catch a similar shadow on my wall
and, when comparing the terrain of my unmade bed
to the vulnerable vertical surface, think to myself,
Why shouldn't there be a bug in my bed?
By catching your kisses
I store you
on the ridge of the roof of my mouth:
a memory to satiate
my sugar-tongue.
With warm weather comes humidity which makes my garage smell familiar, like the excitement when finding cans of dry play-doh in my grandmother's shoebox before it snaps weakly in my eager hands.
Now I stand between the chipped white bookcase and the broken green leaf-blower and I breathe. I inhale deeper until I find myself suspended at a climax: my lungs submerged in memory's comfort, potential energy tumbling toward my kinetic exhale, the roller coaster in my middle school textbook.
You wear the same familiarity in you coat when the cold bites too personally and you reel me in.
yes is a pleasant country:
if's wintry
(my lovely)
let's open the year
both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear
love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we're)
-E.E. Cummings
When certain syllables collided
the sun stood still.
Sound waves, thick like ghosts,
moved my hair and grasped my inner ear
not squeezing, but holding,
cradling and comforting while my lungs stretched
to my hips and left me
breathless.
Upon standing bare before my bathroom mirror,
I begin to compare myself to a cherub.
I find similarities
in my pasty, unbalanced figure
and the gluttonous, jovial cheeks
and I smile
at the humor
and the beauty
stomach, not twisting, but shifting impassively from side to side
and desperate me finds a way to cling
with toes grasping to the closest line
a demarcation between me and them
a questionable boundary, a paranoia
wondering what they think
and insisting that it doesn't matter
