I Am Hiding in Your Bushes and I Am Wide Awake

I don’t know much about killing someone, but I’m pretty sure you’re doing it wrong. Partly, because I’m not dead yet, and partly because I don’t think I could ever be dead to you. If I stood two feet in front of you and you slit my throat, or you shot me, and if you sat there afterwards, and you watched me bleed out, I still wouldn’t be dead to you.

I am hiding in your bushes and I am wide awake, talking to you as if wire ran between our two brains and these ticks crawling on my legs. I don’t mind though. In about twenty- three minutes you’ll come out of your house—hair still wet from your shower, with your coffee in your right hand, keys in the left, and your phone clenched in between your teeth. You’re frustrated. Frustrated because you’re late and frustrated because I texted you, like I do every morning, saying that I hope you have a good day. It’s very passive aggressive, I know. If you knew I was hiding in the boxwood outside your kitchen window this wouldn’t be considered passive aggressive, then it would be creepy and you’d think I was crazy. But you don’t know I’m here, so it’s not creepy and I’m not crazy yet.

When I was waiting earlier, I thought about how maybe I could cut one of your tires. You wouldn’t notice for a bit because you have those run flat things, and you’re not observant, ever. But when you did, I could coincidentally drive up in my car and help you. You would be really grateful and maybe you would forget it happened. If it was sunny, we would kiss, and if it was cloudy, we would sit in your car and mess with the air conditioning, and then we would kiss and I wouldn’t be crazy still and you wouldn’t be failing to kill me.

You’re driving away now and I am upset that I didn’t cut your tire. Because now I’ve thought about kissing you and now I can’t stop. I read a story once in a literature class about a boy who was trapped in his house while it burned. I didn’t really like the story, but I remember a particularly descriptive passage where the author described how long it took the boy to burn. His hair crackled and singed and skin melted off of his bones until he was nothing but a puddle and you couldn’t tell he had ever been there at all. That’s what missing kissing you feels like—the not being able to stop part at least. See what I mean? You are very bad at killing me.

I should leave the bushes now. You’re gone and you won’t be back until around 6:17—6:28 with traffic. That gives me around nine hours to eat food and go to class and pet my dog. All I do is eat anymore. I’m padding myself with layers and layers of fried chicken and French fries so the world can’t get to me as quickly. Nobody wants to deal with a fat person. Have you ever noticed that? If you are skinny and overly talkative, people will sometimes at least pretend to listen to you. The same goes for if you have bad breath, or an unfortunate nose picking habit, or if you curse excessively—if you are fit, you are more tolerable. That doesn’t work for large people though, for large me. I already take up too much space. If I occupy another square inch with my bad breath, or a word, I’m vermin. I don’t mind though. It’s a good deal actually because for one, I get to eat as much fried chicken as I want and two, people leave me alone.

I used to like people before it happened. I used to like going to dinner with people, and talking about social grievances over glasses of fluorescent tequila and juice. But that’s silly really. Bright things hurt eyes and loud noises start fires. I don’t need a great gathering of people around me, breathing on me, taking up our air. I need so much more air now, breathing for both of us. I need air and fried chicken and I need people to get out of my way so I can make it to your house before you do.

I also need my car to stop smelling so horrible. I’m driving down 9^th and Vincent like I do every morning when I leave your house, and like every morning before this one, I hate the smell. It’s sweet and vicious. Some stinks you just can’t get rid of and no matter how much baking soda I pour over my backseat and fresh air I try to breathe, it’s permeating every pore of me. I can’t tell if I have become the smell or if I’ve just become accustomed to it. You stink like that too. You’re an odor. Did you know that? Did you know that you have all the same qualities of an odor?

The night it happened I didn’t think about things like fat, and nose picking, and bushes, and ticks, and smells. There were things more important to be handled, like keeping you with me. I don’t think you’ll ever understand the formality of codependency. Actually, I know you never will because you as good as told me. Remember a few months ago, before it happened, when we were driving in your car on the way to your parent’s house and you were rambling about Freudian slips and how your mother is a whore? You told me “I’ll never be like them, trying to be something and understand everything all the time. I just want to fucking breathe.” You’re an excellent breather and I was so close that all I got was the carbon monoxide, which basic biology tells us is dangerous, but basic everything else tells us is addictive. I’m telling you, you’re really horrible at killing me like this.

But maybe you know that. Maybe, you are self-aware and that’s why I had to kill her. You told me I needed to and I believed you because your beard looked really nice that day and we hadn’t fought yet. She was in your way and I didn’t understand why we were there and what she had done to make you so angry. We were in her house and you were yelling “Go, Do it!” and I did because I am an expert at doing what you want me to do, just like you are an expert breather. We’ve worked hard on these things. I know your exact drink order and how you like your t-shirts folded, I can forge your signature perfectly. You can blow perfect smoke rings and make prose out of sitcoms and sweaty knees.

I know you love me because you didn’t make me touch her. You put her in the back of my car and when your sneakers left blood on my floorboards you poured a little of your sprite on it and scrubbed at it with your sweatshirt until it came up. “Every drop” you said, “I’ll get every damn drop baby.” Your beard ruffled with the effort of your breath and I remember thinking it was fucking beautiful and that I didn’t care about my floorboards.

I watch you go out in your yard every night, when you’re smoking your last cigarette and I wonder if you can feel her watching you from under the ground by the bird feeder. I didn’t watch when you put her in there so I don’t know if you closed her eyes or not. I should have reminded you to. I guess that was when I started to slip up and forgot all the things I said I wouldn’t and when you started to not love me as much.

It’s been forty- six days since it happened and you haven’t spoken to me in thirty-three. In the past two weeks I’ve started sitting outside your house in the mornings and at bedtime and you haven’t seen me yet. I’ve decided that I will speak to you when you see me or in twenty- one days, if you haven’t seen me by then. When you see me maybe you’ll feel bad about death because you’ll see how I’m dying from carbon monoxide and obesity and decades of unanswered text messages. You’re killing me like this. Don’t you see that I’m walking around half dead? I still have your pistol under my passenger seat and it’s sticky from the Sprite. I wonder if I gave it to you, just some afternoon, and said “Shoot me in the face.” if you would do it. I don’t think so because you’re no good at killing people. You really do a crappy job. The key to it is efficiency you see? Make it quick and lovely and get it out of your car before it starts to smell and the blood gets in the upholstery.

You’ll be home in nine hours. Maybe I can write all this down and we’ll talk about it then.

Inventory

We are a collection of spare parts

jangling around

in an old SUV.

Our bellies are full of Sour Patch Kids

and Red Bull, our fingers

sticky with sweat

and growing restless.

The night time is greasy

when we stop to sit

in the trick spot

(we think we see everyone

and no one sees us)

and the only thing cutting through it

is the vodka and peach juice

trickling down my neck.

I never meant to be

so tangled with you.

Limbs becoming ambiguous

and vowels

rudimentary.

People who do not love each other

read lips.

But I wrote the words

you haven’t said yet.

And you have designed the maps

that guide my fingers along

your collarbone

and through your buttons.

Wherever there was sweetness,

it has taken refuge in the ether.

I am in your veins,

the first thing, you ever shot up

in the dark.

Let me list the ways,

we haven’t finished.

Mandible

I am going to buy this house

and burn it down.

You will say I was crazy

that you hadn’t seen me

in the weeks before

I did it.

I am going to buy a rifle

and start a civil war.

I will hold it to your head

and place my finger on the trigger,

like your lips on my temple

and I will ask you

where my most peculiar

freckle is, do you know

where my hips are

in the dark.

It’s my way of asking

if you are strong enough

to be enamored.

What happens in nighttime

is sending me to hell.

I am going to buy this house

and burn it down.

You will say it is all

my fault and

We will dance in the ashes

and you will wonder

why nobody has really ever

truly

touched you.

Osteocytes

Wicked children:

It will break your heart

to break bones

but in the end,

someone must do the

great mending.

Your mother will call you a harlot.

She will say

she didn’t raise you to run around like this.

You know how the great pine

by the side of the house

grows pin straight?

That’s you

she says.

What the fuck is wrong

with having insides.

Thinking that isn’t worth it

wicked child,

that logic

doesn’t work round here.

You’re strong,

wicked child.

You’re made of golden

genetics. According to them

only Christ had a better

birth than you.

So put your tongue

back in your mouth,

wicked child.

You’ve got bones to build.

Anastomosis

When the bombs have settled

I will walk towards you

steaming glass crunching

between my callused toes,

breathing in the marshmallow air.

Once all the building have crumbled

and all that can be seen for miles

are the stems of undulating

black smoke and the fingered

breaths of mid morning

you’ll wave at me across the street.

We can take naps in the silo

eating peanut butter and banana

sandwiches until they are

too soft to even melt in our mouths.

Then I will melt in your mouth

and it will all be better again.

Years from now,

nobody will remember

what it smelled like when the

world ended.

Pickled litter combusting

with wine in the depths of

the river.

When the silhouettes converge

into one massive terror

I will bury my head in your neck

and I’ll sniff at what the beginning

smelled like.

Then, we’ll start

to repopulate the world

Metastasis

The wooden boards beneath me

are vibrating

and in the seconds between the rumbles

I feel you.

You,

always in the spaces

swelling with

all the pride your father

found in the war

and your mother poured into your lips

with the morning orange juice.

Sweetness is in between

the bullets.

Breath in my ear before

the sting and the bite

of veracity.

Poets are counting the beats

between the first time

we said we’re flawless

and this afternoon.

Those inches crawl past my ears,

bed bugs in between the pillows

barely wrong.

Once those scratches

become ambient,

once I’m accustomed

to feeling like I am not

a part of my skin,

inhabiting you instead,

once I am ready to succumb,

you are back

and scores of us are just this

because we never understood

the plural.

Septicemia

The intake of air

that follows your name

coats my diaphragm

in ice.

The sharp clicks of consonants

the lulls in my phrasing

clink the frozen weight

against my ribs,

pieces of muscle

scattering about the body cavity.

When I am sleeping

(when there is no me

without you)

Melting occurs.

I am sick today.

When I bend my fingers

around the spoon

and steering wheel

the little pieces of you

jab into my veins,

sharper still in the central canals

the aorta.

I don’t know much

about illness, except

that Motrin and Tylenol

are not the same thing .

I do know that converting

oxygen to carbon monoxide

is a million tiny victories.

Fontanelle

Rules to be followed:

1. 1. Chew slowly

with great consideration

to the flavor at hand.

2. 2. Only wear gloves when you

absolutely have to. Otherwise

you won’t be able to fall

correctly.

3. 3. There is no shame

in not bathing for several days.

4. 4. Whoever tells you to regret nothing,

fucked up royally. They don’t want you

to do any better.

5. 5. Always carry extra underwear, a lighter

and at least twenty dollars.

6. 6. Sleep now because God knows

you won’t be able to when you want to.

7. 7. When you drink

and aren’t supposed to,

get caught at least twice, so you’ll

get away with it when it really matters.

8. 8. Bare yourself.

9. 9. Kiss God.

Diastole

I recoil, swimming.

It is evening now

and I am still save

the twitch,

save

The kid in her underwear

fingers sticky with the residue

of the day’s work

and from painting pictures

with spit in the dirt.

It is evening now

and as I toss back my

head, black

out

Everything is quiet

in the evening.

Asphalt is phosphorescent

in early March.

The falling cinders

like bread crumbs.

Leading to the corner of the state

where if you stand

on your tiptoes you can see

four different places at once.

It is evening now,

it’s dark and I cannot see

save the twitching.

Catabolism

There is a process that nobody

but you can execute, fingering your way

wrapping your loose ends

in the tendrils of my exiting

conscience.

Tell me the steps to breaking

apart an atom.

Explain love

on a molecular level.

Somehow we have managed

to inhabit the same several seconds of space.

The tomb is built from iron

and etched with the trailing toes

of the trapeze swingers that leap

from my mind to yours.

They will say

at the funeral

there is a process that nobody

but you can execute.

They will cast you in gold and let you

warm your hands in the sun

in the uppermost corner of the park

where you liked to smoke your cigarettes.

Meanwhile, what slivers they can collect

of my transcripts and molars,

my crooked bones

will be scattered in the garden at your feet

becoming even smaller.

Willing

I could sit down and try to announce in perfect terms why I do not feel perfect. Why in fact does breathing feel like the most pathetic labor of the world, a push away from expelling myself into the gray area that lies between comatose and walking down the street to your house. I could write a thousand poems explicating in the most profound verse the marrow of my dream, the one where you come towards me in bare feet and broken brain saying "the reason I survive is trust".

Love, the wolves are coming and they are snapping at my ankles in the throws of early morning- when the drench of sleep slides off between my toes and I am back to hating the day. They are coming for us, they are coming. My coordination is poor and you are so focused on the steps directly in front of your toes that you're missing the ravine a mile ahead. But isn't that what time is for? Timing in reaching back behind your brain and finding that I am standing there, half naked, with dark eyes and a smile.

I could scream it through the glass between us until it shatters and we're covered in scratches. They'll be as shallow as the one underneath your left eye but they will burn brighter than our eyes, and they'll sting. Ether drips from capillary to capillary and you seem to forget that we're bonded by more than blood.

The rocket is waiting to burst from your lips and soldiers are coming. They're coming. I could try to write a poem to tell them to stop, but you can't tell the world to stop spinning, you can't tell God to stop being a bastard.

Cerebellum

I use my cerebellum

to find the peg holes

in the wall where

we carved out plastic

constellations that radiate

across your temple

and your bedspread.

In darkness, it tells me

whether I am right side up

or vertical.

I mistake topsy turvy

for ambulatory

motions, kissing in the dust.

I am brain dead.

Breathing and digestion

maneuvers

of Eden artistry

twitching underneath the cellophane

of cells.

Understand that I have not

chosen to be viscous—

to evaporate under hot breath.

I am trying to understand science.

Hypocrisy

isn’t lost on me.

But this is why

the world moves.

Why I sit here without a

care, so I can feel how

the earth’s axis turns you

a different shade of lovely.

My cerebellum feels

it’s way through space.

Kyphosis

I associate the condition known

as hunchback, as of ambition not yet known.

The particulates in stains are resilient. Their

effect on the human psyche, the brain, isn’t known.

We all feel safer surrounded by familiarity

I like to be with the version of God that was known.

He says, “I love you like I love tobacco smoke

and nighttime.” Let’s go where my name is well known.

Disaster brings sticky fingers and heated skin in air conditioning.

The terms of combustion aren’t known.

I found him sitting in the old formation. He moved as if to

say “We haven’t met. This business isn’t known.”

Handwriting analysis is used to catch embezzlers.

Asked to pick out my signature, all were unknown.

Teach me how not to talk to strangers so when they

unzip their fly I don’t laugh and say you’ve always known.

Finches don’t mate for life because they’re smarter

than me and don’t see for loving what you’ve already known.

Virginia is where dignity goes to be dignified

and where I was the largest revival man’s ever known.

Epiphyseal Line

You grow longitudinally to me

reveling in the constant ebb

of our flirtation

with catastrophe of fiction.

Reveling in the constant ebb

we rolled from side to side in gravel

with catastrophe of fiction

the only disclaimer.

We rolled from side to side in gravel

ravenous roaring rebels

the only disclaimer

is acidic results of my lips on your knuckles.

Ravenous roaring rebels

throwing Clementine’s at passing cars

is acidic results of my lips on your knuckles

the ache of stale breath.

Throwing Clementine’s at passing cars

our flirtation

the ache of stale breath

you grow longitudinally to me.

Trigeminal Nerve V

You ate that diamond

trying to destroy

the criminal

premonition.

Disintegration begins

when the synapses put

themselves to bed

pulling the curtains

to.

Vibrations that push out

ridges in the skin

in passing.

Molars stinging

jaw lax.

Pulsing somewhere

in lower you.

That diamond.