Look how long this love can hold its breath.” Is my best friend and I hope she’s happy. That the person I am trying to reach is not available Is answering their phones and the woman who tells me Sadness, that I can crawl right into the belly of itĪnd sleep there. So surprised that my poems contain so much I wander lonely through Target, buy small things Into this body every day and it’s getting crowded.

Or the card my grandmother picked out carefully Is my Valentine, all mint-smoke smell in my hair In his hands Alisha’s in Florida with a sad songĪnd a linen napkin in her lap. Even my friendsĭon’t want to go out: J is in bed, phone glowing hot “My father told me sexism is dead and told me to carry a pepper spray in the same breath.”Īre my black jeans, a blanket, this bra. “You want me to be a tragic backdrop so that you can appear to be illuminated, so that people can say ‘Wow, isn’t he so terribly brave to love a girl who is so obviously sad?’ You think I’ll be the dark sky so you can be the star? I’ll swallow you whole.”Īlmost spin me into candy floss, except for We can’t have it all, but we can have most of it.” I want the peace in you the front porch rocking chair lullaby our cricket legs rubbing together under the covers. I want the green grass and the tomato plants. When you swear you still love me, the lights flicker.” I want a clap on lamp that works as a polygraph It knows when my thoughts leave the room. I am always missing a word for something in either language.” “I think in English, but my tongue is dressed in Spanish. “When you fall for a man who could never love youĭon’t you tuck it into bed with you at night

It is ugly to watch a thing of beauty turn on itself.” I have already written those poems for you and the image of you walking away from a home that was once ours, helped me understand that there is no romance in the way a star collapses. This isn’t about how ‘it wasn’t in the stars’ and ‘I wish I had loved you like the earth loves the sun’. This isn’t about spirituality, understand. But the truth is, the more I read about the universe, the more they began to blend together into a pastiche of you, of me, of us. I read about why the earth goes around the sun, about the solar system slowly collapsing into itself, about black holes and supernovas. “The day you left, I began to read space theories.

Loose woman poems