There’s something you have of me
The memory of dark skies
Trapped in words faded, unspoken
And a letter soaked in tears
Burn that soft paper return me, o what is mine

Sixteen years after Buggles’ one-hit wonder,
we were still smacking snooze-buttons on clock radios,
jarred awake by Top 40 and traffic on the nines.
We listened on the bus going to and from school.
We listened in the locker room.

It happened beneath a picture of a saint
The night HE showed no restraint
HE is a common coward, a rapist, a diseased pig

It’s not about those who get flushed out surreptitiously
as a scarlet blob between thighs 
Neither is it about those who are scraped out of wombs
With rusty tools of quacks in back alley 

Stomach 
divided from itself,
a walling off of that most 
primal of desires. A journey that will take her
through scalpels and recovery rooms, leave her body

Women are silent flowers
Prettiest when quiet
We do not wilt

Red stop sign 
barely higher than the water.

She is shiny
with accomplishment,
easily mobile,
made up and done up

My body of water 
is the Pacific, 

a fluid flow expanding, 
receding,

Dopamine blocked 
Hindering you 
To tremble 

each mouthful a creation, of
chaos + war + destruction
within.

Thank you
For the storms
The thunder that rattles my chest
Broken bones and bated breath.

We gaze at the moon together
A magical reverie 
Asking ourselves what it means 

After I came back from 
socialized medicine in France
the PCP assigned to me

People say or think at least that for a young petite girl of 18 I am too free 

my dreams are too high 

I look up, and there you are
The shackles of my early years.

Those big red bold words flash as a man with a clarinet voice tells us 
Another brave and helpless soul was taken into a dark room somewhere

I watched you sleep.
Your arms burrowed beneath my thighs
and your head arranged warm to my hip.

I packed my swimsuit without conviction, only
pandering to my ambition to swim in Walden Pond. 

I am 12
I bike to the playground in Chomedey to watch the boys play baseball
I like one of the boys, he is short, freckled with red hair