without
having to say,
“this is how”
,you said
splinters
against
the lid of my eye
,so I can say,
“this is how
dreams die.”
when you said,
“never”
,I felt remorse
for the eye
I had
given you
to see
the world
when I had kept the other
for me to see
you with.
I twist
my neck
past the bone
to watch you
leave
as my mouth swallows
your last kiss
as, “the final kiss.”
my cigarette burns
the empty socket
of where you had taken
my eye
so as to not see
you again.
even if you stood
still
how absurd for you
,in my dreams,
to be crying.

you leave
and I rake over each pore
you had (touched).
so much of you(r face)
in me
and yet your body is only a thing
that enabled you(r lips)
to lie.
I miss the feel
of you(r sweat) against my throat
but my lips remind me
the taste of all that you (n)ever were.
to dig my fingers
into the hollow of you(r jaw)
to kiss you
and rip your teeth out
,to have your smile with me always,
would hurt me more
to have
what only you had.
I want to tear
with my teeth
your breath (away)
that is still
in my eyes.
this is the pain
,the tension,
of you no longer
being “you..”
if I could take apart
every thing of you
separate them
one by one
to regard each piece
,hand to mouth,
it would be easier
to sleep
without you(r laughter).

“If you stand still long enough, it starts to get warm.” He then pointed to the cliffs, the grass soaked edges of the riverbed hanging over the bone colored rocks. “When the river reaches the bank, in the spring, it’s almost like a sauna.” He then squatted, folding up like a lawn chair, bare knuckle colored skin at all angles. Slowly his hands sunk beneath the clear surface and he cupped them together. “I love it here,” he whispered, “you can see the little fish hiding between seasons.” My cousin laughed like a child, curly dark haired Adonis squatting in the current. The next time I saw him he was only angles and sweat, dark sleepless circles, shivering in the heat of summer. He asked me if I remember that day in the river past the hollowed out corn stalks, while I cooled the tracks in his arms with an old moistened t-shirt.
“I love the feel of wet sand,” she said and flipped the blanket that covered us. The lightening lit up the sea like an electrified filament and she danced on the beach between heavy drops of rain. When I called her back to me, full of fear and thunder, she ran towards the wooden grey lifeguard stand, kicking up clumps. Catching her at its base, she breathed heavily and couldn’t take her eyes off the ocean. She kissed me like violence and grabbed hold of my arms, withered as they were. “My father died out there on a night like this.” She said, listening for lightening. “The day I was born was a storm and he died just minutes after.” Later, we made our way back towards the car and pushed our bodies into each other, into the steering wheel, into the seats, into all the things that make cars all wrong for fucking. The only time I ever saw her face again it wasn’t her face anymore in the hospital. It was wrapped and meaty and swollen and bruised. She was doing eighty five, racing against some boy I imagined she thought he looked just like her father, just like me. The police tried to pull her over, losing the boy and she had lost the wheel, slamming the rail until the car slid off onto the shoulder and without stopping hit the first trees of the beach.
From the minute I stepped off the board I knew it was going wrong. My body flattened out instead of turning and the pool seemed suspended below and awfully angry. I could see each mouth open in wonder at the edges, I could hear silence. I landed flat on my stomach from fifty feet up and it’s a wonder that I could move at all afterwards. I stayed underwater and swam from shame until I reached the shorter end, I think some people were actually applauding. My friends met me at the other end, and my best friend’s sister, who I dreamt about off and on, did not reach for me. She laughed and pointed even though I couldn’t breathe and her brother threatened her. She was older and thinner and had dark hair that streaked her head and back, slick. After a while he started laughing and I did too, choking on the water left in my lungs and our other friends couldn’t hold their stomach’s. Later that night, touching the redness of my chest and stomach, I reached between my legs, felt the beginning points of pubic hair, thinking of her laughter.
The boat jumped across the water and the sun was too high, we were out too late. My uncle had madness about him, such anger and rage that I didn’t want to tell him what the tuna sandwich and beer and boat were doing to my stomach. I was too young and as he cursed each wave I held onto the side railings while my cousin-in-law looked for the bottle opener, my head was just above the propeller blades, drowning on board. My uncle yelled “Goddamn it! Goddamn that woman!” and veered the boat at too steep of an angle. I could hear the motor roar and the clattering of beer bottles against my legs and the loud thunk like hitting a buck on the highway of the buoy across the bow and I remember thinking not ever again, no not ever. The boat flipped and the sky was this clear blue and the sun this impossible pinpoint and the meat of my uncle’s jaw and the boat going and I wasn’t moving at all, just skipping above the water and somewhere I could see someone’s arm holding a brown bottle like it was the first thing in the world to hold on to.