RAINCOAT 

she's in the lost and found again. the other night on the radio, the dj said "shout out to all the homeless folks taking a bath in the rain" and i wondered if he'd ever taken a bath all night with each one of his possessions. she looked lost when we found each other in clarion alley, as i'm looking at her just long enough to quickly smile, quick enough to acknowledge her humanity while offering nothing, really, and she asks me what i can spare and i am ready for this question

You were two and three and four and five in this room. When the window stretched dark from floor to ceiling gleamed against the yellowed light of the lamp, your mother would come in run her cool fingers through your still-damp hair. Then she would do the same thing with your brother, who lay on a bed pushed up next to yours, so that when he slept with shadows on his lids, face close enough to put your cheeks on the crack between the two beds large like two nations you could

In Danish havfrue does not mean mermaid but half-woman. It’s better to be seafoam than to be half a woman. The images on posters and bus ads create an illusion of size and substance. In fact she is only four feet tall, less than a woman, slumped on the little rock, bronze arm curved over modest belly. Her head was stolen in 1964. With a new one, is she the same woman? Twenty years later, someone sawed off her arm but returned it the next day. Whether hurt, whole, degraded, gr

**trigger warning: sexual assault, rape** * * * * * * * * * * * The warmth has oozed out of my room I am cold for you. My shoulders made of daggers, cold for you. My eyes stabs cold for you. Messages guilt me into hating you And I stand waiting to tell of rape To tell of triggers and betrayals you did not listen to. Tonight my instability is you Leave, please Please No More Mouth guarded taste blood, I beg for no one anymore I won't ask you again and again The threat I finall

I. i forgot what boys tasted like. i forgot what it felt like to have a mouth on mine, to stand barefoot on the dark hardwood pulling on underwear in sweet morning light as you lean into hands behind your head, slightly smirking as you study my tan lines. i forgot that i could sit cross-legged, naked on endless amounts of white linens and that someone would cup my ears and pull me closer. i forgot maybe i wouldn't be the only one to admire the hard metal slid through my nippl

i used to think people were most beautiful when they cried like amanda seyfried in the film version of mamma mia her wide set eyes would glisten with tears, rimmed in pink, two, or three would glide across her white cheeks the people in her world would hear her quiet sniffles and stop to tilt their heads at her, empathetically and wipe her tears away dont worry sophie, you’ll find out which guy is your dad is in like 50 minutes --------- ­­­­­ when i would cry, i’d go to the

the first time i met a bullfrog i slowly split her open apologizing over and over under my breath as i exposed her eggs and her continuing heart. a sharp intake as i sharply take her murky skin, her layers of protection and rip it, not gently but as best i can, apart. on her back she laid there with her heart bared her life at our hands and our scissors, unfair the way we learn at others' expense. later on with you, feeling electric and against your chest there's a tempo, sli

No one would have noticed the tin bucket on the shelf, how its speckled contours were rimmed with dust, or the way a halo of rust settled onto the pine boards. If only the sea could fill it again, with brine and shell shards and its driftwood cousin, and the gulls could fly above the kelp fields, pressed upward by transparent forces, into a sky so expansive it would cut the rims of their unblinking, avian eyes. I couldn’t see it myself, the space around tin or feather. My cel

Aubade for Eva Like standing on a precipice whose edge is receding, the dawnlight comes inexorable. We protest the sun while still entangled in one another’s limbs. Suspend the moon, fix the rotation of the stars, fury and fight, for we are not ready to face this day. It will come fast-acting to cut away our appendages, make us piecemeal: four hands, four feet, a scalp or two. Two spleens, three kidneys. One heart. Cover us in goat’s blood and cleanse us with mouthfuls of rai

For every time I walked a little slower on the route I knew you took to class for every not-so-subtle glance in your direction for every ill-fated invitation I extended I apologize from the bottom of my heart which was filled with longing for you, for too long Perhaps you were oblivious; perhaps you knew, and carried on, hoping my affection would simply fade But I was shamefully shameless bordering on delirious because desire is the want of what you cannot have, a slow burn i