wildly

I said I'll give you a month. I said, it's only going to get worse before it gets better. I said I'll never be an empty husk, a broken shell. I said this is all that matters & I won't give up. I said read me. I'm pushing on you. I'm pushing so hard I'm pushing infinity. I'm trying myself out. I said, if you ask me, I'm ready. I'm grasping wildly open handedly. I cried nearly everyday in August until I left Idaho. I said, there is justice, there will be justice. I would have written something, titled it justice. but my brain was strangely clearer then. then I healed up, contained cask. I keep on finding you but you'll never find me back. I keep on but I'm still here. just swollen full like it is. I'm around and nowhere. I said it again, too

chub

last year bruce & I went to home depot

and we bought a little cactus

the kind with the beautiful red bulb for a hat

and the gentle spikes down its shaft

He named it Molly

When I left the house for good

he took care of all the succulents for me,

feeding them calcium supplements

turning them toward the sun

making sure their puffy leaves were full with juice.

But I came one day

to find Molly

half dried, petrified

rock-like

her swollen red top

shriveled & black.

Oh, I don't know what happened to Molly,

he said, eyes downcast

And then I took them away.

It was cruel but I took all those sucs away from him & brought them to my new house.

Then I took some back to him

because he could have just killed her,

smashed the pot

decapitated it

burned it alive

he didn't

he just stopped thinking about it

or he just disregarded it

or he liked watching it shrivel, waste away

but it didn't die so maybe there're tender gestures still

Now she's grown three tiny cactus arms, 

and she's reaching to sunlight

and she's chubbing up again with water light health summer

but she's still fucking ugly

because I am, where are you, too

And for you all. I know how you feel, the sums of you, like me. I require no addition. I refuse to upsell. I refuse the heart's upswell. It's swollen enough. It is full with lightening and smoke and the jam of some fruit going bad fast. The gel of my own enormity. The poems for all, the abrasive truth of them all, the disquieting arguments within a self, my drunken glory, in drunken revelry. Wanting a walk through the leaves, so many still covering the streets and street-scenes, marking october, punctuating my own private october happily. Wanting the walk through this litter all red and gold and old, crumpled, to see a recognizable face, and have you read me, yet? will you recognize me when you do? will we converse, is it possible... have you ever heard of it. The rustle, the slight birdsound at night, the wicked idaho shadows on garages and blue of earlynighttime sky. I am in love.