Chocolate

i. all these places feel like home
home is place where
the blue snowed concrete
lights your room
& ices your air
with the comfort of
sleeping against the wall—

your back to
an evergreen mother.


ii. make my first steps as a child of 25
at twenty-five I'll be living
as an echo of youth—
seeing my body written
into new words
I never imagined—
leaving behind the times
I lived as a tornado of anger
& hid in closets
from the coming storm
of another depression.

ten times to die
all laid out in separate boxes.


iii. you're the only thing that I love
I love you like a scar—

a signal of danger
so beautiful
its inescapable.

a sign of past pain
like branch veins
bleeding black into the sky.

you are the place
my terror & life as a knock-off
meet brilliant understanding—
a flock of star-glitter
lightening my dawns.


iv. on my knees I think clearer
dear god—

please let this year
show the world as
a force of unstoppable beauty—
I've seen it now & then

in the savior sound of
the garbage truck,

in the cemetery,
stepping on the dead
with a panic attack,

& watching the clouds
move into perfect pictures
of ballerina grace.


v. a simple mistake starts the hardest time
mistakes pile like unfinished lives

in barges,

mass graves,

dry summer riverbeds.

there is no way
to hide them in closets
with the skeletal remains
of places you fear
& the old advice you've accumulated
over ten lifetimes.

I'm sorry doesn't cover
the cost of insecurity
you keep under a mask

or wrong answers to
yes or no questions.

it can be my fault—
I will shoulder your millstone
until it shrinks to a pebble.

I promise I'll do anything you ask.