Clavicula

Clavicle:
New Latin, clavicula:
"little key,"
from its shape.

I am the star on your clavicle.
I am the air trapped in your throat.
I am your moonsign, your opposite.
I am the lavender on your pillow.

And yet, I am not here.
I am not here.
The pattern of steam left on your window
spreads to the corners of your heart,
and your large brown eyes
care not to witness the frost
I leave behind.

Maybe I can arrive.
Maybe I can be here,
and maybe I can stay.
Maybe it's safe, and I can
allow the star of your kindness to shine
on my own clavicle, where you decide
to plant your key, your kiss.

Maine Dile Se Kaha

I'm trying to forget the poetry I wrote in my mind years ago, lying next to him, tracing the constellation of freckles on his arms. I called him my year-round valentine, and I folded the tiny piece of paper over and over before slipping it into a more conventional greeting card, whose delicate, pale insides mentioned nothing about private jokes using special voices.

Those voices, though special, are in the distance now, and they're no longer piercing. Canned laughter follows me, the shape I've become, the space I warmly occupy, solitary and safe. I remember smelling the cinnamon of his jacket. I remember our first fight. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," he said, and I spent almost seven years trying not to,

and mostly succeeding, except when I failed, and he cleared his throat, and I wept. I'm trying to forget the poetry I wrote in my mind years ago, lying in bed alone, dividing my care between the cold space next to mine and the confessions brewing in his brain. I had wished I were his country, his school, his job. I had wished I were older, wiser, all healed-up. My eyes grew darker, and it was harder to distinguish his freckles from stars, his anger from worry. The constellations bled together, their wisdom now hidden.

Someone is playing an Indian melody as I write. Her voice cracks and strains; her heart breaks. I wash down the remaining symbol of my embarrassment and try to forget the poetry I wrote in my mind years ago, when love was new, its delicate, pale insides mentioning nothing about the private jokes that aren't funny, the special voices that crack and strain.

Scaffolding

- pills and metal for breakfast
- metal is always an accident
- thinking about salty kisses and avoiding Valentine's Day, avoiding metal, avoiding red and pink and other fleshy colors
- he said he feels like unclaimed baggage, even though it was a choice
- it takes a lot of time just to figure out lunch
- ordinary lives, shaped by unclaimed choices
- "unclaimed choices" is an oxymoron
- milk, milk for lunch
- intersecting research categories with lovelessness, divinity, footprints in the snow
- the cold ends life, draws new categories, fleshy colors from rawness, lovelessness
- avoiding, avoidance, staying in bed, rescheduling, redressing, addressing depression, avoiding circumstances involving humanity, reorienting oneself with animals, with snow, with copper pennies--dropped, neglected, wet and cold
- old tea for dinner, left in a cup in the fridge from yesterday
- plotting confusion in my diary, connecting each dot until a figure, a road, emerges, fragrant and new
- there are many roads now, where there weren't roads before: do I go to school, do I teach, do I draw, do I write, do I connect these thoughts with semi-colons, do I wait for someone else, do I wait for myself?
- do I get my shit together? which new road do I trace with my fingers, with my intuition?
- meanwhile, snow gathers, nestled between syllables
- more pills for breakfast

Manswers

I.

Translucent, transient: if I were somewhere else, I'd be omnipotent, or at least some sort of nomad. Instead, I translate various graphs onto fucking sand paper and negotiate my invisibility with the cat. Is this adulthood? Or, more pointedly, is this womanhood?

II.

Today, a brother schooled me on subjects that were already familiar. His advice and know-how wrapped themselves, tentacle over tentacle, around my small intestine. Do I not know enough about feminism? Do I not know enough about poverty? Am I competing with him, somehow?

III.

There was no whipped cream for my hot cocoa. The focus, the concentration, was on chocolate. (Because I'm female? Fuck you.) Therefore, the ten-minute conversation about whipped cream did not need to happen. I'm fine without whipped cream.

IV.

Translucent, transient: if I were somewhere else, I'd be omnipotent, or at least some sort of nomad. Instead, I'm superimposed on a section of the straight male psyche, a small blip in the corner of some dude's brain, the white foam of my existence depending on how many times I allow myself to be interrupted, to be scolded like a child. Like a child, I'm feeling my way, my invisible fingers clutching hopeless ideals. Meanwhile, he speaks of liberation while trapping me in a fucking coffee shop.

Neighbors

Confusion is a beautiful barrier,
a sound that's soft in the mouth,
but jagged just enough to notice.
Who wants to be held then heard,
heard then held, pain and triumph
cross-stitched so tightly, the seams don't show?
Who wants their fear to be seen whole,
then redrawn, shape for jagged shape, from memory?

I want to know who's whole.
I want to know whose thin fingers
are wrapped around my fear.
I know this is sloppy, but I want to know
whose time is stretched from my window to theirs.