Hook, line and sinker

I wanna turn the whole thing upside down– move out where

it’s blue, find new stories to tell. This morning I mixed the dough

until it broke down, then wondered how much salt I’ve tossed in the sink

since I started breathing. Ran like a maniac too, thirteen miles just at

freezing. What I wanted versus what I gave, and all that. Not sure

if my pale skin has any effect on the constellations on my arms, should call raven to clarify,

but I was pretty sure the only stars were in my eyes. Anyway, it’s all the same to me,

the marks and the scars. The river and the bay, both flowing with the same reflection

of the bottom of your shoe. Or me. I once pulled a splinter out of my shin and

when I kept pulling it came out with a string attached, like a hook on a line. I was the fish,

I guess I am the fish, don’t remember jumping in after the salt though. I guess I didn’t expect the brown to clear so quickly, the haze to evaporate and leave me with that clear, true

blue. So soft you could shine a light through and see right to the soul. And I did. I figure

there has to be something worse than seeing too much death. Like this:

you knew the only reason i did it was because you asked, those dunes never meant

much to me. Meaning you knew how these things go, how one minute

i’m hot and crying in your arms, the next there's quartz under my heels and

even the blood isn’t enough to bring me back. Twelve years and i still

remember it like my leaking eyelids, your scratchy cotton shirt. And all the while I was screaming about hunger, about trenches. Didn’t you get it then?

It wasn’t just venial anymore, not like the ceramic spilling out of my top shelf,

And it wasn’t a choice: all that starvation, the pink of your lips. Don’t you get it now?

How you never got to see me when I was most beautiful– the delicate sunlight coming in

on the blue tiled floor, hitting the mirror and reflecting rainbow onto anything it could touch,

the sleep in my eyes, the pulpy blueberries, the lingering light so like the cold red

of your nose: All of it so clear between the freckles, so easy to leap from word to life, and you never did.

Those warm hands, like suns. And my dreams at night, of orange zest and your thumb laid over mine, so many that it was hard to tell the real from the fake. So many that the only thing I could swear true was you.

I never told you how I wanted to create something bigger than the water’s grief, how I

wanted it all to freeze. How I wanted. You know me,

I've always liked my lies, bubbling like hot oil until everything gold goes–

truth be told, I wore the mascara for myself, to remind my eyes they’re green.

I know I've made a mess of everything, the folded sheets. It’s because nothing’s cosmic anymore. It’s because I had a one track mind. It’s because even through the mist, the mountains, the promise of prosperity, I only saw you. I could only see you.