In This Stupid Moment.

You know, it's offensive when
22 year old smokers breathe putrid sarcasm into my face
About how they'll die early when really
They don't know who they're talking to
Or understand how embers suffocate
Or what it feels like to not be able to recreate a flame
By pressing a button on a magic lighter
Or the knowledge that in real life
You can't just borrow someone else's match if yours goes out.

I honestly feel I've miscommunicated something to the universe.
I'm on thin ice with my body, like we had a fight and I never apologized.
It's infected me with a phantom lovesickness
Where that's all I can think of.
At work, at meals. In bed.
And I slip from myself when, without warning, it comes around.
Deeper, sicker.
I put so much love and attention into our relationship
Except I never thought it would turn toxic.
Those smokers know all along.
Well I never asked to be perpetually sick.
I never asked for a burnout in my pancreas but I
Thought that if I lived for my body I'd at least have
The two-thirds life expectancy about which the doctors told me
When I was twelve.

This is only the beginning, I think.
I know we're trying hard but with all the soul I invested--
With those countless inseparable hours--
Why impregnate me with such pain?
It's just--
I don't think I deserve this ghostly devil.

And there are others who beg for this shit.

A February birthday poem, written in September.

This is a birthday poem
Because you loved to read my poems
And you liked it when I wrote about you

I'll put this on your grave
But your soul's not there
And I don't know how to find it
Still, I hope you will read this

You still have a poem of mine
But I don't know how to get it back

Happy birthday
You bought me a painted sterling bracelet
with arched jumping dolphins for mine
at that festival
next to your house
remember?

I liked how those dolphins jumped in a
continuous circle one after another
Brightly
I liked how it fit my wrist

That was September 10 years ago
And I lost that bracelet
It's gone Intangible

I can't walk through the festival
I see its lights dangling between
telephone poles and I cry
Dolphins dripping down my eyes
And the twilight colors them painted sterling

In my poem to you
I won't talk about how beautiful you are
Because you don't exist
Because you weren't when I saw you
your chest stuffed and your face made up
and they couldn't get your skin color right
so you looked yellow
You looked dead
I was scared to look for too long because I thought your eyes would pop open

I can't see anything but those pretty dolphins
They're unraveling becoming a string
now separating too

I don't want to let them go
They're just a memory
They don't look like a bracelet anymore
I forgot what colors they were painted
I forgot the little things I liked about them
I forgot what the clasp looked like
They fall sadly into separates
Dripping they look like hot tears
I wish they would turn into birds and fly
You died without being ready
So they never will