optimism

the haha you!
the edit you
there's always the you to write about, a sort-of you
the all-sorts-of remember
mes
I think back
in a few months ago
or 6 months ago
I was trying to see the pain end
trying to date that end
telling things, to picture it happening
like Molly, you won't live here forever
in a deep sadabandon place
you'll find the surface
you'll move in with your blood
get comfy together, you'll get comfy
together
swim up in it, bubbles coming from a nose
for my mouth
how I shout, mouth
to suck
being a stop-now
suck it out, stop being a shop mouth
a sob cave-maker
let your burbling oxygen bubbles rest
let your breath turn into flowers again
photosynthesize
on the horizon
oh haha you
oh, 6 months later you
oh where it came, from where I am again
the dissolve of flowers in a vase
the burning of your name on a hill
my abundant cusses
I've almost forgotten them
empty hole empty house
no more radiant crevasse
full of sinew & thread
the prettiest sky
the prettiest scab
peel me off
smile laceration me
the pink soft of a nomore scar.
  the teen is    dead

we listened to yo la tango, remember them?

He will bring all of the candles

he said chocolate helps, jsyk

and she bought a bag of tiny tangerines, 

and I can see myself diving right into them

like when Amanda opened that tiny clementine

and she told me to look at its puffy section

like a little slug on her leaf hand

and its shell 

its pith a neon orange baby foam

and I put it between the rows of my teeth

and I teethed
and I teethed
all night

when I was 18 I listened to yo la tango a lot

in the tall dark dormroom

and I festered

(I asked you yesterday, as if this is a question, what do I do now

and you said,

wait

wait, and brood

and I said how can you wait for nothing?)

when I was 18 listening to yo la tango

I knew what I was doing

but I used to sleep till 4, when it would get midwestern scyscraper village dark

and now I am up at 4, before it is grey spring western light out

and I am very aware of the mountains,

big fool rocks

the continental divide

the crying light where the tears flow down east or west

and some get to your rivers, and some get to mine.

Maggie Nelson said something about waking up with your weeping, don't write me anymore to tell me about it

because she knows you're so in love with your weeping

or something like that.

And maybe you truly are

but I truly am not

I am not the type anymore

when I was 18 

I would scream into the bedclothes

I would rip & sob & cling & claw at my smoke hair

and my young face

and I couldn't now scream on the patio, in the livingroom, into the couch clothes

and throw up the young foam

my young brain foam

as my throat makes a sieve for it

and its goop pushes out, around, tries through the cheesecloth

to be swallowed, into the mash bod

or to be vomited

in bubbles & sobs

See now I'm 28,

going on 29

in about 20 days, I guess

so my brain is still there, it found my head again eventually

and my heart crawled back

slunk back, eyes downturned, embarassed,

out from where my bean stomach lives in struggles

and all of the organs 

fell back asleep

in their gooey cradles