bold

“So,” I said, swiveling on the barstool.
It was a Monday night, ordinary as laundry.
“Do you think we’ll live together?”
I took a long pull of my IPA.
It was only slightly on this side of bitter.
Her eyes crinkled. Her dimples deepened.
The subtlest film of moisture appeared
at the root of her lashes. She took the hand
I had put on her lap, traced the skin there.
The bar was filling up, college kids
on a study break. The glass
was pressing a groove into the napkin.
“I love how bold you are,” she replied,
then swallowed hard. I saw the ripple
of her throat, the movement down her sternum.
We were inches apart. We were apart only inches.
She opened her mouth to say something,
but not a syllable came out.
Her eyes never moved from mine,
and that, that
was how I knew.

luggage

Luggage like history, like stories you carried
that said something about the places you were willing
and unwilling to go.
Luggage like roadmaps, like stop signs.
Luggage like loss, like yearning.
Luggage like weather, the sky a continuous unfolding
into gray and storm, wind that would uproot trees,
leave the fields flattened.
Luggage like the home you never bought,
the ring you never wore, the child
you never had. Luggage like the missed foul shot
and the final game of the season.
Luggage like an empty tank, and you driving on regardless.
Luggage like the wounds you were dealt by love,
unsuspecting as you lay yourself bare for more.
Luggage like broken. Luggage like dead.
Luggage like a tumor lodged in the middle of a spine
that insisted on bending through the pain.
Luggage like family, like lack of family,
like too much and not enough.
Luggage like bad directions and threadbare and absent.
Here’s what I am carrying, what you are carrying
despite ourselves, despite everything we want to forget.
And yet the moment I come to you with all that rawness and wrong,
I know nothing will keep you from seeing what I hope
and have always hoped to be seen.
The simple fact of this body reaching out, just wanting
to be held.

yes

yes
yes
after a violent rain,
bloody battle on the roof
mud-inked, wind-broken
roots chunked and hazardous
the velocity of the river a cause
for posted signs and nervous dogs
yes
yes
to blisters on shoulders from too much
sun, mouth woolly, limbs limp
as old dandelions yes
to skinned knees and black-bruised
egos, shyness and tongue-tripping yes
yes yes to the slow crawl of indecision
to remorse to hideous mistake
to saccharine and over-salted
to no vacancy and lost chances
yes to the ugly failures in front
of the hometown crowd
to oversized and under-whelmed
to cheats and lies and cowards
yes to the rips in your new silk dress
to torn up and torn down
yes to the conversation
you didn’t want to have
to irrational, irreconcilable, irreversible words
yes to cracked throats and busted ankles and spent light bulbs
and burned batteries and whatever dies after
it has lived
yes
to a broken promise or three or nine hundred
yes to the time it takes to tell the truth
yes to desert and dry spells and lunacy and lost hope
yes to the middle of a blind-white October
yes yes yes
to sharp and scrape and cauterize
to discard and done for
yes to ducking under yes to darkness
to breaking in two
or more pieces
than you can count
yes to the disappointing lunch
to the disappointing summer
to the disappointing marriage
yes to the seesaw fear of stillness and escape
yes to the bad haircut in eighth grade that ruined your chances
yes to the fumbling in the back seat that led
to your bad reputation
yes to beyond repair
to what’s done is done
to a change of heart mid-stream
yes to bad art
to old age
to out of shape and shapeless
yes to where have you been
and why didn’t you call
and how many times do I have to tell you
yes all of it yes
not a moment too soon or too late
this yes, this yes
this ripe and mad and fleshy terror of a thing
this yes will save us
tie our restless shoelaces and stroke
our fevered cheeks and pay off our
inglorious debts
this yes, this yes
this aching starved animal
will bear down until we open ourselves
to its wet mouth and slip our skin
under its teeth and feel its dark heart beating
ruthless against our lungs and let our heaviness fall
like a string of dominoes until we sing
our fragile, damaged beauty
into the waiting arms of the world.