It was nice to see you on Thanksgiving.
I wore ripped jeans and an abandoned
shirt on account of having been drugged,
raped and abducted the night before.

I put a hand on your wife’s shoulder before
I touched yours as if we were all friends
as if you don’t prompt half a dozen poems
when you touch the waistband of my pants.

He forced his bent dick into the window he’d
created in my panties. He insisted, you love me
as if not loving him would secure my death.
Afterwards, I lay catatonic on a concrete slab.

You looked great. My mom was surprised that
your hair is short. Shows how long it’s been.
When we got back to our table she said your
children are beautiful. They are.

The cops wanted to arrest me. Did I tell you that part?
When I fled the fake Lyft south of Manchester
they found me stumbling along the interstate
slipping into ditches, being sliced by brambles.

When I see you, I feel so painfully alive. It feels like
New Year’s Eve, my body a bottle of champagne
and everything else dark and jarringly crisp.
I want to let you in. I think things would be better that way.

They would have arrested me if I hadn’t said
I WAS JUST RAPED which, let me tell you,
opens a whole new can of worms. They don’t want
to let you go after you’ve said a thing like that.

I don’t want Richmond anymore. The only good
thing that happens there is the thing that can’t.
When I said I’d visit you asked why. The answer is
I have to. Part of me doesn’t live without it.

The cops will tell you that time is of the essence
as if you’ve never seen Law & Order SVU, as if it’s
the only training they’ve had. You’ll have to focus
on the boy cop’s blue eyes and say Lawyer.

When I was 16 my parents took
me to an Orioles game. During
a rain delay, I smoked in secret
beneath the concrete canopy

hunched over my diary in which I
likened the men who’d scurried
across the field with a tarp in tow
to an orgy of ants. I remember this
now when I watch the surfers as
black and faceless as ants being
scattered about by waves. I want
to say I like watching because it’s

a reminder of how small we are
in a world so big or how nature
will do what it wants with us and
how, from a distance, that’s actually

sort of beautiful but I think it’s
Really about that first orgy of ants
that first time I recognized men as
replaceable and best in numbers.

I’m forcing myself to remember
my dreams in particular
the one two nights
ago when we met in 
a hotel room and we
kept our clothes on
we didn’t sleep we
just lay there, my head
on your chest except
for when I turned to
face you and share a kiss
so exactly like how we
used to kiss that we almost
couldn’t make the kiss stop.

I straddled you once, on the green
chair that was slowly unwrapping its
skin from its thin, weathered bones.

The lights in the tree were on, those
sinking, desperate things. I was
pretending and you pretended back

until we weren’t anymore. In the bathtub
we passed a bottle of Whiskey beneath
my chandelier and went wetly to bed.

Our shirts clung to our breasts and we
used my ouija board to summon my
grandmother rolling over in her grave.

She stayed cool by the fire while I rosied with wine. Rocks reflected flames and the desert shivered. When our friends fell away to their tents she led me through soft sand that stayed with our toes. We climbed the Shala stairs.

Her hair, a poem
of clotted curls entitled
A Day at the Beach

The moon stays full and glowing here, smiling always into the spout of our thatched roof. We gathered pillows and I tucked into her on reds, purples, and golds. I became royal and she became a blessing.

The moon in Baja
is full and rich with winter
To meet it, we rise

I cupped her hips, thin but unyielding. She nodded my way down. Afterwards, she thanked me. No one does anything just for me. I kissed lips left open and tiptoed down the stairs, both of us solitary creatures, both with something to give.

A small bird tattooed
above her elbow, static
but always in flight

I watch a sail-shaped shadow
on your neck and imagine
it curving towards me.

Your eyes are peacock feathers
shimmering gold. I want to
ask you if we’ll touch again.

I slid my hands into your hair
so easily once, my fingers
dolphins frolicking in your curls.

You are your laugh, melodic
and bold. You are your
lips when they open for me.

You are the person in the
pictures taken when you claim
we were making mistakes.

I want to sit in a comic book diner
with you and share a banana split or
maybe a milkshake with two straws.

We’ll get whipped cream on our faces
and wipe it off without flirtation as we
talk about politics and deep down sea
creatures, as we teach each other languages.

I’ll say (something) Did you know that
means “ferry” in Japanese?

And you’ll say (something) and I’ll say
what? and you’ll say I said ‘Start with Spanish.’

I’ll say bitte but I’ll mean danke and you’ll
nod and say something in incorrect French

and I’ll say I hate French and you’ll say,
No, you dislike French music and I’ll

be glad for how well you know me
and we’ll hold hands and sip our
milkshake or eat our banana split.

He’s my favorite one
his eyes wide set and hollow,
his hair in consistent nap

That Jesus looks like someone
I’d mistrust but would shoot
Tequila with in an airport anyway

I’d compose erotic poems
about that Jesus and then
forget all about him

That Jesus, now retired
behind his rock reflecting
on the endurance of nails

When I woke up
on January 1st
blood had adhered
my sheets to my
knees, my legs a
tangled Mermaid tail

On the floor outside
the bedroom door
a pool of sequins
rippled with sunlight
my dress an ocean
of lives not lived