I didn't give you my heart

I didn't give you my heart
I didn't give you
my heart I didn't
give you my heart
I think I think I

gave you I think
I gave you my
foot and since I
gave you my foot

it has been much
worse much worse
than if I gave you
if I gave you my

heart it has been much
worse much worse
than if I gave you
my heart

Home XI: 114 Days Ago

Home
may be
where
you go,
after
tip-toeing
around
the world,
to walk
on your
bare feet.

Time, Home

I thought for a second
that your fifteen minutes
was an hour,
figured if I gave it a week
you'd stay a day
or two,

then a month went by
and it was a year,
October-o'clock
but that's just semantics-

golden hours copper
sunset silver spoon
make new friends
and keep them new
sun, weary moon
will grab the tide,

and we'll watch, intently,
because everybody
wants to make somebody move.

I thought I saw you.
Maybe it was May,
maybe winter breeze
through Pasadena June-

for every minute you slept
I lived two.

I spent three, four, six seconds
staring at your lips
and it was six o'clock-
the sun was cold, like we like it

and you made me breakfast-
I didn't know you could do that
in the time it takes
for me to bat my eyelashes once.

Then a week past
and I had to wait a month,
a month made of months
I waited, to touch your neck and jaw
to rest my hands around your face,
to say nothing

and to think, I think I'm home now-
but I'm not quite sure,

in that moment
I was ready to die of old age.

Home X (ten)

Leave home

to come home

but it (perhaps)
was not-home

and this is not

home-

these are elsewheres

that are heres

these theres

depend on

where you

lay your head at night-

not right
for left or wrong
but left, then
gone and
not home,

the un-home
the no-home,
the unknown-

it vibrates
inside my fingertips
and I am
terrified.

If you asked me (and perhaps you did)

If you
asked me

(and
perhaps
you
did)

when love
stopped
being the
greatest thing
on earth,

I must
have
said

it didn't--

no,
it never
did.

Before you know me well

Before you know me well
I should tell you that
I'm the kind of person
who for months stood by a plan
to move to Argentina

because I really liked a pear I ate
that had an Argentina sticker on it.

And maybe also
how for years I wanted to be
a marine biologist
and now I don't really know why.

And how just about everything I've done
that I've been proud of,
I did because someone I loved
told me it was a good idea.

Maybe I'd tell you over coffee
how I sometimes try to give up coffee,
but I'm never quite interested enough.
(I write this, as I sip my coffee.)

I think before you know me well
you should know me better,
so you can know better, if that's good-
but anyway, maybe you know best.

---

Yesterday
I wondered if it was mathematically possible to see the exact same formation of raindrops hitting West Louther in one moment and another.

I wondered if it was art.

I wondered if knowing more about math would make me know more about art.

Or rain.

Concept of Vertebrae

You wondered
why I was able to lay so still-
so precariously nestled between
the edge of your mattress and the wall

and so cold, and so gray
like the wall, in the light

like I might-

but I didn't.
I didn't make myself the wall.

I couldn't speak then
but if I did, I might have said
something about my baker's dozen
thoratic spine, the heart
that reeled and shrank back in its cage
until it was vertebrae-

no space to move
and no will to explain-

I wondered
how you were able to climb into that twin bed
without touching me-
without touching me at all.

I loved you with my body

I loved you
with
my body,

and minded
my effect
I asked

you with
my answers

if
the numbers
were correct

respected

boundaries written
some in sand
and some
in stone-

I loved
you with my
heart still
when

my body
was alone.