this body was a person once

with uninterrupted skin

and lungs ballooning with ambition

it even knew its own name

this body isn’t much for purity culture

but perhaps it was the hands that touched it

that took away the self, the animation

or perhaps it was the slow decay of mourning

or the woodgrain patterns of trauma

all building upon each other

to make this body a tree

but this body was a person once

this body was a person once

my body was a person once

Without

Can I capture a black hole

before that which it has swallowed?

Can I capture nothing

before having the world between my teeth?

And if I have not done so, 

why must I feel this absence?

I thought we only knew a word

by its antonym–

only know darkness for the light,

cliches for original thought.

Yet I feel this loneliness

without knowing the kinder twin. 

Would I be so bold to name it love?

No. 

Rather, laughter, or comfort, or you.

My ghost lives

in my diaphragm. 

Waiting for the good days

when I meditate in the morning

and journal afterward

when I read Tarot for myself

and listen to the universe

when I listen to birds

and care about the sound of waves

enough to draw the headphones from my ears. 

My ghost lives

in my diaphragm.

Waiting for one more breath to join us. 

Glossary of Terms 

after Franny Choi

Who do you trust to hold your hope for you?

I trust any bee delivering pollen through my garden

and any fairy that can hold a secret 

well enough that I don’t know they’re visiting. 

I trust a portion to any friend who has bolstered my sobriety, 

the awkward, heavy beast that it is. 

And more to any family member who let me cry.

I trust a sliver of my hope to the stars,

hope they’re too far away to lather it on their tongues as gossip.

I trust any flower that only opens itself to the moon.

I trust the moon.

But never myself.

Blackout of I’ll Be A Sky by Tallest Man on Earth

I’ll be a sky, so full of empty now
That little falcon’s diving too, lover
So when I’m restless they could lead somehow
What in the world I’m gonna do out here
I feel that I’m a little lost most of the time
But I don’t really mind, oh, when my heart feels young
I travel through the storms but then I hang to dry
And I don’t really mind, oh, when my arm is in the rain and the sun
And they’ll be working the only skies I know
Working the only skies I’ll ever know
The sun is up there like a blazing eye
And I go swimming in the cold river
And I get hungry for the big ideas
How I could carry this whole world, brother
I feel that I’m a little strange most of the time
But I don’t really mind, oh, when my heart feels strong
I travel through the storms but then I hang to dry
And I don’t really mind, oh, when my arm is in the rain and the sun
As they’ll be working the only skies I know
Working the only skies I’ll ever know
I travel the fever road
I travel clouds of my mistakes
And sure, I can drift away
But I’ll be just around the corner from your love
There is a world within the world somehow
And it will steal me in the long winter
Oh, how I wish that I could call it now
Just to remember there is peace somewhere
I feel that I’m a little strange most of the time
But I don’t really mind, oh, when my heart feels strong
I travel through the storms but then I hang to dry
And I don’t really mind, oh, when my arm’s in the rain and the sun
And they’ll be working the only skies I know
Working the only skies I’ll ever know

Unzipped

I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent

wishing to shed this body.

Just unzip my chest and let my ghost sink to the floor. 

No suit of skin, no tender veins, no ripening flesh,

just a spirit in the shape of a question mark, 

melting, but not going anywhere,

as if something can melt back into itself. 

Even rain does not have this luxury.

With each time it freezes and returns to liquid

it is bound to different molecules,

follows a different track across the planet

And perhaps, with some thought, 

this is what I wanted after all. 

For my organs to tumble from my body

to live different lives. 

For them to come back and whisper to my phantom

all the things they’ve done. 

In Focus

I focus on the sun’s rising

rather than on the heaviness of my tongue

drooping in my mouth 

with the weight of the unspoken

with the weight of your lips

not taken back with a kiss.

I cannot sleep.

I focus on the sun’s rising

even as the moon projects itself into the sky

After all, what is the moon without the light it borrows.

Though in fairness, who are any of us 

without the light of those around us. 

I will comfort into my muscles

and pray for the return,

I focus on the sun’s rising

filtering through frosted window panes

a spidering memory emerging behind falling eyelids.

I try to taste the coffee that has not boiled yet.

And is dreaming not a virtue?

In a garden somewhere

I whisper secrets to the flowers about how 

I focus on the sun’s rising

more often than I think about where it is in the sky. 

I make lullabies of these confidences.

The petals weave themselves back into youth.

The words will taste the same when the buds turn again 

to blossoms, the second-coming metamorphosis.

But perhaps my tongue will differ, perhaps then

I focus on the sun’s rising

only at dawn.

When I wake, though

the frost lingers, no flowers today.

None except the one I mold for you

hands sticky with clay and promises,

realizing my love has always been born when

I focus on the sun’s rising.

The glass and the tool to soften it both start as sand

I can’t quite identify all that I gained with him

but I do know that he took my spine as I left–

let me wilt for a while

until I found a way to reconstruct it 

from shattered bottles and memory, 

vertebrae of sharp edges

that kept tearing at the skin

of anyone who dared lay their hand

in the small of my back.

It’s funny how our bodies fight 

even the kindest

in the name of self-mercy.

Tonight, when I enter my room

and find abundance in my own arms

I will still wonder 

at the attainability of softness.

I have the tools

but cannot reach 

that one spot on my back.

I will wait. 

For someone to turn their hands 

to sandpaper and damp cloths.

For someone willing to 

hold me until the shards are gone.

My Saturn in Pisces Speaks to My Jupiter in Sagittarius: A Contrapuntal