In the Hopes I Will Get To India, Someday

I wanted you to charm me

I wanted a fucking break

I wanted it so badly I

Forgot you were the snake

Crime

He reminded her of the things she had worked so hard to forget

He reminded her of the naked monster crouched in between the lines of every children’s book

He reminded her that she had been raised right

He reminded her of the glowing night light in her old bedroom, or more specifically

Why she'd needed it.

He spoke like the terrifying void of black moths around her sheets

Most consequentially, he reminded her of herself.

Her breath made circles in the dust beneath his bed.

Ashtray

Noon is the midnight of inner-city Cinderella

He found the best smoke of his life inside the Marlboro box she dropped in the first floor hallway

And was convinced

It was love at first coincidence

Zoo Part 1

I see you

Like a child sees a zoo elephant

Too big for sagging skin, oversized, dehydrated, awkward

You’re embarrassing to look at

They don’t take care of you here.

I didn’t know pity wasn’t love,

I wanted to put some water in a bowl for you

And fold you up in my skin, instead

I wanted to pick you a flower

I did,

But your eyesight was poor, you kept

Running into the sides of your cage

You trampled it before you even noticed it was there

I should have felt sorry for you, but I only felt sorry for myself,

Because I had to watch

From the powerless side of the glass

Mother

I am the justification for your infertility
You peer back through the past as if it were a pair of spectacles and decide
That I am the reason why
Your grandfather died on his way to work on Sunday
Dust with the grain, carol in the rain
Refrain
Remain the ways
Number the days
Don't go crying to daddy.
Immature gaze,
Cross continental blaze
You prayed for a daughter,
But you got a maze.
I tried to get to the windy city to quell the ember in my chest, you messed
Me up, dress me up, please
I don't know what you want me to wear.
I wanted to get drenched in holy water so I knocked on the church gate,
But I went
Too late,
Raised voice
Hyperventilate.
I tried to melt someone
I tried to calm down
A once solid state has no other fate
He drowned.
He's around, I've found
Buttons from his shirt buried in the dirt of your father's grave
I misbehave
I read ahead a chapter,
not quite forever after, but at least one more day of laughter, after all,

It runs in the family. 

Crush

You must know true love never happens onscreen.

We like to watch ourselves projected against the concrete wall

Blurred by the cheap grain of an amateur

We deserve nothing more than to be perfect in our own eyes

As cowards what else did we ever have a hope of

We tried too hard

for documentary status and broke the fourth wall

But there was only enough room for me to slip through,

Now I’m watching you.

You’re not sure where to look.
I'm no less trapped. 

Don’t you know why people watch movies?

So they can experience things they never will.

In fact, maybe true love only happens onscreen.

I’d like to press you against a concrete wall.