Like Paper

i am on the verge of tearstains

i am setting up house inside my head

a little house made of

books and words and blood memories

where i sit inside

slowly rocking myself sane

and you will never know

because i will walk and talk

my eyes will still glitter

like a bittersweet marionette

ill make all the right gestures

but this is a play i have already written

and you are playing your part

to perfection

acting like my voice doesn't waver

0r my expression doesn't slip

out of your fingertips

i just watch from inside

carving ruins onto my arms

i tried drinking the bar down

i tried folding myself into

someone else's skin

like the foolish man

who built his house on sinking sand

and on street corners lips mimic

these are the best times of your life

but my life feels too old

like i've been walking in this tar patch

longer than my life line stretches

my bones crack 

and the trees whisper secrets

that leave me winded

no one can coax me out now

my skin becomes paper

my veins the pen

ill bind myself up

nice and neat

writing the epilogue into skin.

True Story 4

i was a child and you were a child.  we used to hold hands in the hallway because it was what everyone did.  i thought i was a woman trapped in a girl's body so i would smoke cigarettes after school and kiss you in the woods on the weekends.  you were just my type--breaking all the rules and pretending to be someone who you were not.  my mother didn't approve and so i just held your hand tighter. i knew there was something else behind the baggy pants, drugs, and bravado--like the things you would whisper over the phone late at night. you told me about it once--finding your brother that day--gun on the floor and blood on the walls.  the house had been too silent, like death, and climbing the stairs was like wading through quicksand. there he was.  but it wasn't him at all, just a rag doll limp on the floor.  and then there was the waiting.  waiting for the proper people to come to take statements, to snap photos, to make it disappear.  and then there was the waiting.  waiting for the world to feel right again, to stop hurting, to stop crying, to make it disappear.  so i just held your hand tighter.

Wishing Wells

small hands break like ice

splintering

under the weight of

tree stump hands

little girl does pirouettes

in the sand

feet disappearing 

more and more

with each turn

she won't crack a smile

for she might fall apart

spinning

spinning

spinning

like a fatalistic top

people tell her time heals

all wounds

but they never tell her

when to stop.--EAC

True Story 3

this is my first funeral.  i am nine and can't keep my shoes tied.  i can see the coffin from where we sit and it looks alien and sad.  someone speaks about your art and the words you bled onto paper.  someone else talks about your friend that burned out with you. i have seen the poems and the drawings--you knew you were going to die.  but, if we keep saying amen then we don't have to cry.  i stare at my feet wondering how we all continue to stand, to walk, to breathe.  it was so sudden and now here we are layered in black singing the songs you like, but cannot hear. i remember when your foot got run over by the car in the driveway.  who would have known that you were not invincible?

this is my second funeral.  i am 14 and waiting for someone to catch my breath.  there are pictures of you lined along the altar of the church, your heart-shaped face a dagger in my side.  a year ago we were in the backseat of the school bus eating pixie stixs.  a year ago we were giggling over hostile crushes and stolen kisses underneath the gym bleachers. now you are just pictures left undeveloped on my disposable camera or the cds i let you borrow but you never returned.  your blood is still on the street. we are all here instead of cleaning it up.  i won't dance the same anymore now that you are gone.  i won't laugh the same knowing that it will only continue to be stolen.  i refused to wear black eventhough i feel like i am blind stumbling through darkness.  i remember when you told me how excited you were about that dance.  why did you ever leave?

this is my third funeral.  i am 15 and figuring it out.  this time, i don't go.  when i was small you used to hold me in your lap and read stories. i have pictures to prove it.  i used to notice how our skin was the same color in the summer, like the color of coffee with a little cream.  i used to forget how you yelled.  i used to forget you could be mean.  after we left, i used to think that you did not have a heart, but in the end, your absent heart killed you.  i didn't cry when the phone call came.  i didn't want to seem a traitor.  i won't know where they buried you so i can't come leave flowers or all my inadequacies at your feet.  don't worry i'll learn to forgive along the way, but for now it is easier to be angry.  i remember when you sold all my things.  i wished that you would die.

True Story 2

driving through chimalhuacan with the windows down, my hand tracing the planes of wind as we moved along.  we had been drinking micheladas all night.  my mouth was on fire, my body  numb.  your sisters were in the back seat arguing in spanish about the cabron at the entrance to the club.  you were angry, your face stone-like and immovable.  you had wanted to beat the shit out of him, but we had pulled you into the car. your pride was hurt and somehow it was my fault. i just continued to sit silently in the passenger seat, waiting for it to pass over.  you didn't let it.  more yelling in rapid sequence.  i made a comment and your anger spilled forth into a hand gesture that connected with my face. i sat stunned for a minute.  it must have been an accident, but my mind didn't interpret it that way. i completely shut down leaving rationality far behind, screaming at the top of my lungs to stop the car. you pulled the car over into a dirt side street apologizing repeatedly.  your sisters were whispering spanish in my ear. all i heard was rage buzzing in my ears. tears streaming down my face i pushed the door open and stepped into the street.  i hesitated for a minute, then took off running into the darkness.  i could hear you yelling from the car and i didn't care.  i pumped my legs faster. my rage and frustration only carrying me further from the situation.  i ran until i couldn't breathe, my breath coming out in ragged gasps and muted sobs. it was then that i realized that i had no idea where i was. the street lights were broken and police sirens echoed in the distance.  my purse was in the car. there were only 50 pesos in my pocket.  all of the sudden this place was no longer beautiful, but dark and scary.  i was alone.  i sat on a street corner for what seemed like hours too stubborn to walk back to where i thought the car may have been. i sat and questioned everything.

True Story 1

do you remember the night you called me, after having a gun shoved in your face

on the blacktop? face down, head turned to the side, crushing the pavement, holding your breath, eyes shut tight, this was it.  and it was not like some movie where life flashes by in clips of black and white and color.  it was just people--that you know, that you have known, that you wanted to know again.  i had been lost in your memory for some time. the me, when i was still light inside.  the me, when smiling didn't seem to hurt so much.  you said, you wanted to hear my voice.  i said,  i wanted to not feel gutted when you said my name like it meant something to you.  life is too short and time is a bullshit excuse for turning away, but i can't stop running.  i picture you on your bed, but the only image i have of you is from three years ago.  i try to picture you as a man, maybe taller, maybe harder.  we speak through the phone like strangers.  how is this so when i used to read your body like a map with my fingertips?  i imagine the gun going off, your blood spread thick on the concrete and i know that i would have died too--in black and white and in color. hope is always your smile in that photograph of us on the beach when we were too young to realize that the world was burning up.  i told you i would come home if you asked me to, and then the silence, like the questions we never answer, like the gaps we never fill.  i was never enough to keep you still.  rather, you were in and out of the state, the country, your mind...  and now you call to hear my voice but it isn't really enough to break your heart or move your feet.  so i breathe slowly and say i'm sorry.  my voice is stretched tight like the phone cord beneath the door. i draw my knees into my chest, my back against the bricks in the hallway, and i can smell your house like i was sixteen with the world hanging upside down and butterflies in my stomach.  the only fluttering i can hear now is my heart--fight or flight.  you didn't fight tonight, which kept you alive.  i fought everyday after you left to keep you in the palm of my hand, etched into my life line......which kept me broken.  i have the scars to remind me.  i start to cry because i am not this person and you almost died and the ocean is so far away and the bed is lonely and your voice is heavy.  you said you'd call and i knew you wouldn't.  we said i love you like it was different, as if our lives could still talk to one another like they used to...

I'm missing home...

Things are very far away from me right now, as if I am watching silently in the background as events unfold, people speak, hands touch.  I have somehow made everything complicated and ugly and am not sure where to begin the arduous task of cleaning it up.  I seem to recall smiling a lot more in my past lives, the left side of my cheek pulling up a little higher than the right.  Now it seems unwarranted and fake, but I do it anyway because it makes everyone more comfortable.  I'll grin like a Cheshire cat if it means that you won't ask me questions.  I don't have the answers anyway.  Sometimes late at night, I'll sit on my steps smoking a cigarette and looking at the sky, wondering if I am really connected to any one or any thing at all.  Sometimes I tread barefoot into the street hoping that someone I once knew will drive past.  Sometimes I lie awake in bed trying to drag memories from the recesses of my mind, only to find they are blurry and dubbed over.  I'm not even really sure what really happened at this point.  All I know is that I am missing home.

Was

i always find it funny

having to use sentences in the past tense

when speaking of you

was...

is such an ugly word

with claws and teeth

that nip and gnash

some keep telling me 

that time is a line

but for now

it is broken and fragmented

the past cutting into the present

your voice echoing where your body

no longer stands

you are washing away

like chalk on pavement

but i keep drawing you back in

nudging the concrete reality

with my shaky fists

with my purple crayon

i can't stand in the house

my feet burning 

into the gray granite in the foyer

my ears screaming 

in protest against the clock in the kitchen

tick tick tick tick

this house 

smells like a life

this house

is lying to me 

as if you were still 

sitting in the leather chair 

with your feet propped up 

on the leather ottoman 

a finished crossword on your lap

this house

is lying 

so 

i won't speak of the prozac

in the cabinets

or the tissues in the trashcans

i wont speak of the wine

in the fridge left over from the funeral

i won't speak

but your books whisper secrets

from the shelves

there's the one you dedicated to us

the black ink set

by your own hands

i can still smell the printing machines now

like i was six 

and coloring under your desk

color is a language

and i am speaking in

blacks and greys

mottling the carpet in the den

dirtying the hardwood on the porch

sullying the sheets in the guest room

so i can avoid 

the shadows on the walls

the distortions in the mirrors

i can't look into the closet

knowing your coats and ties

swing silently on wooden hangers

i sleep with your army tags

underneath the pillow

a voodoo charm so that i might sleep

and dream painlessly

an obol for Charon

in case it becomes too hard to breathe

life has morphed into a static nightmare

like falling when waking up

or imagining that people's faces

are not their own

i'll keep speaking in the past tense

but i am not past 

this.