Your
thoughts and hopes
impressed elsewhere.

I didn’t mind.
Or at least pretended long enough to believe
I didn’t
Which also failed to impress—
my fortitude or lack thereof—
adding to your exasperation.

Odd how—
now it’s true—
I, un-minding and disinterested,
Am, of a sudden, the center
of your smile.

And since it is true
my smile back
is genuine.
It says—

Don’t hold your breath.

You are unimpressed and I
am tired.

You say, at least it’s not broken
these heavy parking lots to nowhere
uncracked, viable, and ever so—

Useful
a saved world of grimy spaces
for people who never show

integrity
hope
and
(always and)
a sense of you

float the space
between before
and begun–
a risk
worth making

(just past midnight, if you’ve forgotten)

I couldn’t breathe to look at you

(which might’ve been because 
I lost my inhaler in someone’s car-
but maybe not)

Instead I closed my eyes

(to stave off the asthma I’m sure)

Turned my head 
And waited

(if you could call it waiting,
the three beats it took you to cross the room)

For your breath to slide in my ear 
And down my neck

(you never could keep your head still)

With a whispered, “I’m sorry”

(if there’s a phrase to change the world,
it’s not that)

And I shrugged as someone began the count down

(as if we had Times Square
instead of handfuls of confetti)

Which reached zero before you asked

(lips harmlessly hovering near my hair)

“You sure you’re ok?”

(as if it made a difference one way or the other)

But I didn’t bother to reply
I was past midnight, 
And you?
Just my darkness before dawn     

I want
(not mobility,
not convenience, but)
to wind my fingers
through the loops of a cord–

Get them so immersed in the coils
I lose seconds
thoughts
heartbeats
in twisting them free

Instead
I spend the time imagining
your own slim phone–
buzzing like mad on a table
in an empty room, or
in your hand–
the screen blinking up
into unresponsive eyes

Go ahead
shove me away, box me up
as if I don’t exist or never did
as if my tears or this anger
don’t act as icebox and furnace
to your very core:
until you can’t breathe for the empathy.

I get it
you’re a rock, an island
adrift in a sea too deep for your anchor
too embroiled in your old songs
and last ditch efforts
to prove to yourself, to the world
that I’m not here.

So prove it
show me

Show me
that your soul doesn’t beat to my rhythm
that you can pick up and move on
that you’ll return to ignorance
(when the whole world’s screaming)
that you don’t give a damn.

Go on then.
I’m waiting.

a train wreck sliding
in the gravel of a
broken smile
all bones and
multifaceted irises
of blue and black and green
but mostly blue
her lids blinking up
a regular tornado
as if we all wouldn’t notice
her glossy unfocused sheen
as long as she kept
her eyes dry and smiled
brighter than a supernova
but it was all pointless really
because behind it

behind her

I saw you

This is how you are in all ways -
Hands, eyes, voice, scent

Even your stance
(apologizing to the teacher)
is steady, strong
uniquely you
wherever you are -

but most of all,
and most evident,
(especially now)
you are who you are
in the way you smile.

All these things I notice.

All I notice, I measure
from a distance
(four desks behind)

Tell me,
(not that you know my name)
do you believe that bit
(the teacher said)
about the tree in the forest?

I wonder.

If I open my mouth
and you don’t hear,
do I make a sound?

Boom

To the second your soul
bubbled through your skin -
your heart twisting
at a look, a voice that made
wonder
and hope
more than words.

Desecration
now rides the night
with long black claws
but these things are not dead.

This darkness isn’t all that ever was
or even all that’s here.

You are the spark.

You want to fix this?

Ignite.