ascend a staircase
he takes your hand
lay you down in his bed
satin
black hair clutched in between fingers to assuage those thoughts inside
bite down
and we’re really neither here nor there

dream: sitting on the shore, the waves keep coming in, it’s all grey. a dead monarch butterfly appears next to my foot (monarchs are a symbolic for God). i get upset because i love them so much and always fluttered around me when i was little. i get up and someone grabs my arm and starts pulling me into this beautiful sunshine. a black butterfly lands on my stomach (black butterflies always represent death) and won’t move. i can’t see who the person is who was holding my arm, but he takes me into a beautiful light.

Greenpoint,

I walked under the BQE past parked cars

from the L train in that dress you bought for me

My hands cold

We meet at that diner

sitting on the sidewalk

I said:

just leave me here

alone

1999

Girls Locker Room

I could never get dressed in time

3 minutes

I always showed up late

I’m still lost on how to love

How to feel

How to exist

I lace up boots for 10 minutes

I walk down hallways thinking about that song

12 years later he’s in my bed pulling me on top of him

“you’re going to die” he says.

“yes”

you too

Life:

May:

We went to the beach

I lost my keys,

things were falling apart

and i knew it.

I lied in my underwear next to you.

You held my hand while we walked on the boardwalk in jeans that didn’t fit me.

In the car:

Silence,

Los Angeles.

August:

you pushed me down on the bed

you’d hold me down and cover my mouth

you tell me to be quiet

but i couldn’t

your weight on me.

it was my birthday

you said you wanted to go see her

We sat in the Portland Rose Gardens
You held my hand on the plane.

We lie in bed in the hotel on SW 11th without touching

Then we were in separate bedrooms in Brooklyn, talking awkwardly over Chinese food on 86th & 4th.

I call & you say “I’m engaged”.

Then:

“That Chinese food place is on fire right now”.

i held you on the bathroom floor in a t shirt and jeans. i was supposed to be naked but you didn’t care. we held each other in bed talking about life and sadness. you asked if i could just stay the night and hold you.

i did.

i went to your loft at hollywood & vine. your black hair falling into my face and cigarettes in our mouths. you lie next to me and say you don’t understand what intimacy is.

we both know you lied.

i lie in bed for days looking for ways to try to appease no one that pleases me.

i said, i hate pretentious writers. he said, it takes one to know one.

i sat in your backyard, reading, telling you the memories i had. it was april. you still loved me. we went inside and you took off my blue shorts i bought to try to look pretty for you. i said “you should write.” you said “no one cares about my life.”
i cared.

I’ll hear the train leave from the station leaving behind my own indignation, a solid sound I know doesn’t reverberate but will never destroy the injustice I try to negate.