Nymph

The strands of your hair
are like reeds underwater,
drifting upon the shelf
of your shoulders.

Your frame resembles
driftwood, limbs liquifying
into currents with resigned
and fluid movements,

your hips suggestive
of equal parts seduction
and indifference,
much like the yank
and dismissal of waves
sideswiping onto sand.

When you speak
the slope of your neck
trembles with the vigor
of effervescence—
it releases and lifts
your voice, propelling
your words forth
with the finesse
of diving dolphins.

In your wake
I'm tumbling through
the depths of your
dimensions, like a mermaid
who's been given legs
and cannot hold her breath.

.

Imparting

I could give you space
a forest of space

where the canopy umbrellas
the trunks of trees so resolutely
that there are roots
that have never been touched by rain,
or wind, or human hands;
and it has been rumored
that when tigers and vultures
have shorn berries from the branches,
something in the seeds, or the skin
has sent them swiftly into sleep.

The streams here are teeming
with dim, flat fish
that neither jump, nor blink.
They merely breathe, and float:
round, slow bubble
after bubble rises,
bursting at the surface,
releasing an incomprehensible
sigh, or yawn;
while below,
their lazy fins
whisk past diamonds
which shimmer and outshine
dull pebbles entrenched
in the riverbed,
the brightest luminosity these fish
have ever seen
as hooks have never slashed
through these waters.

While wandering,
you could pause, and bathe
in an enormity
of silence.
You could abandon in the flush
of swinging vines, and waterfalls,
banana leaves and elephants.
You could traipse along
mossy, fallen logs
accompanied by lemon-tailed parrots.
You could devote
dense breadths of time
toward crushing perfume
from flowers.

And on the outskirts of the forest,
in a shadowy cabin,
I would miss you, patiently
with an unswerving reserve
of patience.

I would wait.
And if your limbs became
exhausted,
if your solitude gave way
to loneliness,
if you began to long
for the footing of floorboards
and the presence
of four fixed walls,

I would request of the rabbits
to guide you through the thickets,
past the willows
and the sleeping, snowy owls
around the mud pools
and the ditches

until my doorstep came into view.
You could walk across my lawn
knock upon my door,
and I would invite you in.

We could talk gently, quietly,
shades of daylight fading
from the bare, wooden walls
of my sparsely decorated rooms;
our voices wilting
like the fronds of ferns
folding in against the cold

and I would feign forgetfulness
as if the pads of your fingertips
had never reached
to smooth a strand
of hair
behind my earlobe,

as if your palms
had never pressed
beneath my cotton materials,
your lips imprinting your smile
along the slopes
of my forehead,
eyelids
and navel

as if distance could be
delicate;

as if forgiveness
could be so kind.

.

Timeliness

I am the girl who missed the train
and ran for the bus, breathless
just as it was leaving
with its passengers arranged comfortably
in neatly coupled seats.

I am the girl who left the station too late
to catch the train
because she hadn't checked the over-sized,
imposing sign of Arrivals and Departures,
deciding instead that Her Best Guess
would be the most romantic—
and thus important—
evidence of fact.

And I am the girl who did not look back
as the train roared on and the bus blew by
because something in her dim heart understood
that the train's momentum could not be slowed,
that the bus was destined for other roads
and that if things were really meant to be different,
Divinity would have entered.

Now due to my recent series of transportation
failures I have opted to walk in favor
of being whisked swiftly underground
or holding my breath above rickety wheels
while shuttling along these crooked
brick-lined streets.

The city lights, as guideposts, are steady.
At every intersection I am met
by the clear, familiar flashing
of artless traffic signals.
And walking, in its purest,
most pleasing form
isn't concerned with waiting
or schedules.

And yet,
although you can change what you chase,
you can rarely control what follows:

because I am the girl
you continue to pass
when you aren't looking out your window.

.

Gatto

He told me, casually, while lying on my couch
(his eyes dark and round as nectarine pits, fingers
like asparagus—firm, yet steamed—legs the laziest
blonde spaghetti to've been thrown against the wall)—
"You are like a cat." I stopped tugging at the edges
of the cushions, intrigued—a simile? I'm insatiable.
Pretend I'm blind and illustrate it, please.

"When you aren't curled up in sunlight you're
clawing to leave. Sometimes I can't tell
if you're purring or shrieking.
You're a domesticated cat who will not stop
hunting yet your bowl has never been empty."

That night, I dreamt about cats.
I dreamt about cats yawning and cats
bolting from open doorways.
I dreamt about cats with their ears being
scratched and cats getting smooshed
beneath tires.

And in the dream I heard the voice
of one of my dead relatives:
"Dogs love people. Cats love places."

I woke up remembering the couch, the day.
I remembered his presence in the room,
how his words pressed on like a rolling
pin; how it had felt enchanting,
like I was in another country—
a country littered with silos and tulips
consuming entire meadows, in a country
I'd never been to.

And because I've never really
traveled (my family always went camping)
I find the idea of exploration
terrifying

so that when I wander,
I sink, and dart
and when I love, I drift

maniacally shifting between
taking photograph after photograph
and then—where's my parachute?—
abandoning.

(You are the loveliest foreign language
and I need a Romance to Amanda dictionary.)

.

The Same Room Twice

I once read that you can't walk into
the same room twice.

Which could be a comment
on a room's lighting,
how it is constantly changing:
how candlelight burns dimly,
how moonlight glows softly;
how sunlight, in the afternoon
captures dust in phosphorescent
vacuums, sending yellow-hued chute
after chute spiraling inward from the windows.

But what if there aren't any windows?
What if a room is devoid of light?
(Why can't a dark room
be a dark room, twice?)

It must be that the meaning has more to do
with the Gravity a room can occupy.
With the presence, or removal of
a mood, or memory.

(In the rooms that I've reentered here
I've heard familiar voices echoing
where bodies can't be traced.
I've seen familiar shadows struggling
to maintain their shapes; most walls
still stand with infallible weight
and in rooms, which at one time
where hardest to leave,
the floorboards still tend
to speak.

And yet, I have found
to my bittersweet relief—
these rooms have changed.)

.

Starfruit

As I was driving home the air
was wet and pink like grapefruit juice
just hanging in the sky.

Exhausted from waiting tables
all night I carelessly careened
past my exit, detouring down
a back road, all curves alongside
the ocean.

And the waves were liquid lavender just
barely moving, like stubborn molds of Jello
resisting freezing,
and that inspired me to park
in an abandoned lot
and run across the street in that misting dark

and I ran ran ran until the bowl
of the moon was spilling over the shore
with fruit: as I ran,
I drank the constellations like grapes
until I'd taken in every star.

And what I want to know is

could you fall in love like that
could you fall in love like that

because I do
every day.

.

In the Recess of This View

Let's allow our mouths to leap
across the roofs of city buildings
and land upright, twirling into
gentle pirouettes, skimming
dizzy O's into elevated sky.

Let's linger at the U-turns
of the side streets of our fingers,
loitering around our freckles
of smoldering sidewalk fires
and the uprooted pavement of veins.

Let's scale across our limbs
as elevators, pausing
upon reaching the lobbies
of elbows and kneecaps,
the carpeted hallways
of ligaments, compressing
every button, exciting every
switch, until alarms sound
shake throughout
our trembling foundations
and we are forced to take
the stairs, tumbling down
curling and quivering steps,
shuddering as we swerve.

(In this room
the curve of your shoulder
shines beneath the heat lamps
of your eyes which hover
in your face's handsome foyer

and as the traffic of
conversation between us
rises in siren screams
I'm designing detours
across these floorboards
in hope that your heart
has vacancy.)

.

I Considered Your Eyes

I considered your eyes as puddles
of color, and under the umbrellas
of your eyelids, I jumped.

I splashed through green and yellow
waves as if they were liquid leaves
luminous and lavish in the spirit of Spring
(where laughter blooms like wildflowers
and burdens borrow the bodies of birds
diving, gliding on unfettered wings).

A mild breeze fluttered delicately
every time you blinked, ruffling
your colors ‘til they swirled richly
sweet, resplendent on the surface
yet gently deep beneath.

I puddle-jumped until my toes
were pruned and in that slender
canoe between eye and cheek,
I slid in, paddled and fell asleep.

.

We Were Riding Bicycles

We were riding bicycles with baskets full of confectionery
flowers and we kept pedaling til we reached the entrance
of the tallest building in Boston. It was noontime, it was cloudy.
You had gumboots on and I was wearing a bathing suit of blue-hued
cotton candy. Once inside the lobby we took the vanilla-scented
elevator as high as it would go, and then we ascended cocoa-powdered
stairs, up to the roof, where the ground was covered
in thin gold wrapping. Each ledge was lined with nutrition facts
which we tore up and bunched into tiny bits until we'd amassed a pile
of garbage that was more like a mountain of sugar. We dug into it
and our warm breathing moved the grains to soften and stick
together until honey was dripping while we were melting in the middle
of this street-salt city which is rarely ever sweet enough to kiss.

.

In Verse

You are a kiwi in winter.
A dry-clean only JCrew
sweater, a vaguely tangible oasis
in the middle of the desert.

You are like yellow pants,
a headstand; you move in circles
in the midst of a square dance.

You are a literary acrobat,
a bowl of ice cream
with a side of eggplant.

You are the twilight kiss
which eclipses past curfew;
you are the ruby shoes
for this Dorothy senselessly
searching for her heart in Oz.

You are the parachute bringing me
down to earth from a sky
of disenchanting stars.

You are poetry I have been inspired
to bookmark, highlight
and memorize, if only to capture
the beauty in your complexity
and the worlds in between
your lines.

.