Palms

The first time

I saw a lie caught behind your eyes

I covered my skin in silence

Told myself the quiet words

Psalms that bring restless sleep

How many nights have I sung this swan song to my body

Hoping you’d stop me

How many mornings would I wake to kiss your skin

The most honest movement I could give

To be met with this sliding scale of reality

Who knew a promise could bend

Only if met by ocean

And scaled skin

Who knew this body would allow all this black

this night a place to rest

Inside of me

Who knew an idea had so many hands

that iʻd let her close enough to take hold

How quickly iʻve become a parking lot to your late night stumble

Home is the name I called my palms

When I inhaled you under me

But I was wrong

My Body is just a forgetful promise

My love

Just nickels lost under the lint of your pocket

Your smile

A tattoo covering up the reality of a late night mistake and unsteady hands

My breath

Caught in the gaps between your teeth

Our promises

The only lies bold enough to try to hold me

tonight

do not let
him steal
the scent i locked under your skin
that
was meant
only
for us

Leaving Maui

How many times you
 gonna give this kind of love
not to be returned. 

1. 
You were the first love that brought me out of my body
loved me from quiet quiver 
To shouted shiver
my first lesson 
In love lost in translation
And the importance in developing language 

2. 
You were meant to be my safe heaven
A love that would return
Feed
And never leave
I misjudged your fur
Didn't see the k9s of your wolfs grin under your soft cape 
I remember the way you use to hold me
Your breath upon my neck
It was only a matter of time before I got bit
And left 

3. 
If only perfection were precise 
If only our lips 
Pulsed in the same meter 
We are a love so strong it supernovas
With star charts reminding us of our incompatibility 

4. 
I am naive 
Young and foolish
Only shards of what i was before 
I started handing myself out
like script to beautiful women who promised to love me

New Years Resolutions

New Years Resolutions

1.

pull honest words from your throat

like teeth from cold gums

before they have rotten

hollowed

and decayed

give the best of yourself in sincerity

take a scalpel to the parts of you that refuse truth

find an ocean

Saturated in salt

to heal the wounds

2.

Forgive Brooklyn

her dark and empty smile

hips of her street corners, too lose

dim eyes batting over you

the tap dance of gunshots at noon

forgive the way none of her body knew how to embrace

the ocean of your skin

how she refused to hold you

3.

Forget Manhattan
her blistering skyline

The lights you chased

but never touched with more than your imagination

hold,

then release all the dreams

left unmade

4. 

let go of the shards of love that will not be

remember the woman who was and isn’t anymore

she should not stay frozen

in an evil masquerade

remind yourself that any lie can defeat any love

if given the breath

do not

give it the breath

5.

write every day

listen more than you speak

chase peace

6.

be the woman

your woman

wants to come home to

make home, for two

cultivate the piko

your center shared

worship the pō between brown bodies

7. 

Exercise the muscles of vulnerability daily

Find the space between an honest leap

And insecurity

Offer your heart suspended

Fight the desire to be bound

Trust that she need not lock you in her palms to care for you

8.

fight the fear that keeps the quiet salted

that has kept this page dry

Fight the stationary silence

The way its nothing

Washes over your body

Like warm wax

comfortable it its restriction

10.

stop saving space in your heart for people who have no desire or conviction

those who are worthy will show up

will find you themselves

stop leaving cookie crumbs like maps in your wake

those who you have to entice will not stay

be your most devoted lover

do not let another year be written in fear of being forgotten

or left,

alone

9.

always leave a part of you to be made

tomorrow

660million Km3

On the night we collided

We were skyscrapers

Then paper planes

Then

Crumpled notes passed between lovers in study hall

we learned to share new space

learned to hold my body still

Under

Above

Beside

you

On the first night I slept in your arms

My whole skeleton was quiet

Wishing not to wake the sense from your skin

Maybe you’ll let me stay

If I cover my voice with the darkness

Maybe you’ll forget

I'm not him

And pull me close

At midnight

You did

Four days later I was back in my own bed

Struck by a silence so strong

It filled my room like a song

Flinging secrets to the ceiling

Old paper plane models

You might have found it amusing

The second night you slept in his arms

Again

I found myself waking with a scream

I called out your name

But you were no one close

A million breaths away from my body

No wind to carry your scent to me

Tonight

We are laying in our mattress

In the center of the pacific ocean

We are a whole sea of islands

Together

Clothed and parted

660 mil km3 of water

salt separating skin

for the first time

in months

we are two bodies

diverted

tides pulled

in opposite directions

I am soaked in the salt of mistakes

And you

Are brown skin

Covered in cloth

Too cold

To be touched

Silence

i know the way silence grips

clasped against esophagus

all answers from diverted eyes

Are lies

breaths meant to cloak the quiet with comfort

will cause

Even the mightiest to crumble

the look of fear

to stay

for fear

not to be left alone

will love as less than deserved

will give quiet and kisses

will not stay

as long as you hope

I know the promise to run

To acknowledge the leave before the quakes

Before you are left with space

But who has ever regretted trying to tie love sill steel fingertips

Those who have tried to make the crumbling stick?

The only tears we remember

Are the ones that fell

When we realized our cowardice

In walking away

Dont let go

Not many will love like me

Unfurl their whole ocean

Damnless heart

Will surrender the moon

Tides

And every part of them with the potential to pull

But you want a soft

Easy love

Like a waikīkī winter shore break

I cannot be so small

And cold

Not to throw my whole self in your direction

You asked

So I gave you my mattress

The cent of my hair

My body

And history

You smile and say you love me

Like love

Is something you can leave in the margins if things get heavy

But heavy is all I know

Steep crashing water

Is my only rhythm

I can give you no less than

All of me all at once

To love

Is to let a billion gallons of water fall out of me

While you turn away

Knowing

I will never get any of that water back

Which is to say

I would be nothing

Should you choose to leave

I know this by the scent of being left before

Which is to say

My memory of love is cut and scared over

Which is to say

That I have seen the warning signs of kite runners before

Which is to say

To love you

The only way I know how

With all my weight and strength

Falling

Is the bravest thing I can do

Which is to say

I am not afraid of you

Just the space you could leave behind in your wake

That you are worthy of every pound of this boundless love

That I would give you myself

A million times over

Even knowing the kind of hallow that could come

Which is to say

When I open my eyes

Try to pull you close to my chest

Whisper I love you

Hold it close

Hold me

Close

And

Please

Don’t

Let

Go