hate you yet

you stand at twelve and twelve and 2
too tall
from me and
i think i love you
because i haven't learned
to hate you
yet the birds
and the turns
and the yellow cried
for that maple syrup smell
fades from the pillow
casing the one earring
i pierced your ear with
right.
was wrong
and swelling
tell me again the story of ours

"that summer you lay between my collar bones" (newest)

that summer you lay between my collar bones


you, the smell of potato rosemary bread
warm in my sheets baked
and twisted
like tiny whirlpools in the mattress
Maine in springs and foam

me, hands bathed in vanilla
extract and garlic still creeping
from my finger pads
orange rinds sleeping under my
nails to hold your soles to shoes

light honey-limps through the broke
glass pane taped with news print
we take turns reading the
stories aloud
april 14th 2003, same day
lasting forever (until it rains)
and that one story about the dog
and the house fire is always
our favorite

loftily truthed

sew speak so speak the     truth they tell you

in this stop watch    pocketed by the Cuban
crises and that gum stuck in your hair
(try peanut butter) but mom is crying
from neighbor boys fructose induced bottled
sex drive to the store because she can’t
find milk and            you steal the twenty
to buy those sneakers or gym shoes or
whatever the dialect tech tics told me to tell
you to chew on before the procedure
where they will     imbed that sing bird
in under outside the epidermis
then you will sing it
not speak it
it truth