day 9

Damning My Vertebrae

It wasn't until I turned six that my mother realized I couldn't shit.
I spent toddler years avoiding it—took too much time,
letting a pancake form kept me in control.
My mother would shake her finger and yell as I drove circles
in a Barbie Jeep, frustrated I wouldn't cave to the body.

We tried suppositories, syringes shoved up with chemicals
bubbling inside, as if I was an older male.
My mother watched my insides on a screen, pointed
and gasped in awe while I attempted to caulk my body
together like tiles on my bathroom floor, cemented an anger
inside my body—built a home for the hatred I couldn't let out.

For years, I’d push, push, push at myself, slam
literal walls until everything fell away except for those
holding my insides together. I ached to slice down the small
intestine, crawl inside and glue parts together, inject
my veins to die—anything to keep my body from itself.

My mother blathered on about details of a will she didn't need yet,
and I studied markings in her ceiling tiles and hardwood,
pissed about how archeologists deciphered skeletons without codes,
about how my body didn't have it’s own codes, even after my doctor
touched my toes together and watched me clench my eyes in pain.

I ache, but to carve out the anger my body builds.
There is no knife for this. If I could climb inside myself,
there would be no chipping away— lovingly, gentle.
There would only be TNT and hatred, damning
my vertebrae to another type of Hell where everyone’s in pain.

day 8

In his head, the face of an ex-lover
who yells discomfort, who eats pizza
with a knife and fork, who drives off
a boardwalk because his sister
called to tell her he was leaving
for another, younger. But now she’s gone.
She must have struggled, the police said
earlier, left nail marks on the door

and seatbelt. He only sees red.
The red of clover mites, layering
sides of railings, stairs, his hair. Clover
mites crawling into his glass
and socks like sand. As he picks
at the flakes, flicks them to the floor,
his sister’s name flashes on the phone,
but he doesn't answer—he knows
what she’ll say. In the morning,
when he looks under his fingernails,
he’ll find remnants, crusted
and scentless, half like blood.

day 7

An Interrogation with Your New Lover

Did he mention that one day we’d braid ourselves
into an oblivion run by people on heroin with curly hair?
After you two watched the same movie, all hopped up
on butter and theater darkness.

Did he mention I enjoyed my yellow sneakers,
didn't give a shit the year everything went to shit
and he suffered from ambivalence? His mother
should call, let him know she missed him while
his head in your lap, resting as he talked.

Honestly, I know he mentioned the laundry,
the starchy pierce to the buds on your tongues.
Yeah, you’ve eaten nothing. It’s funny, right?
The way an action so small, shutting a door,
turning off lights, goes unmentioned.

Did he mention me? Sure, your understanding
of fine wine—bitter but with hints of chocolate
and oak. Sure, the swirling motion of glasses
and minds, wearing down with very little joy
by the hurricane of pink.

I’m sure he mentioned that brother’s suicide,
his laughter at the funeral, sitting in the back pew
with one of their mothers, or love. Did he tell you
about this tomorrow where it never rains?

day 6

It wasn't the gnocchi that made me feel
Italy. It wasn't the stench of human shit,
overstuffed pigeons, or the way language
sticks in the back of my throat like honey.

Instead, it was the Italian woman’s satellite dish
and her punctured sheets on the clothes line.
It was the motion sickness up the mountain,
the moment before vomit curdles
and dehydration gives way to sleep.

It’s this same exhaustion I find anywhere,
both at home and in this villa’d mountain,
where America’s complacency seeps through,
almost following me.

Italy isn't beautiful anymore. Not even a little
godly. It’s the flies crawling on gravel
in a downward dog. They’re mine, these flies.
These red arachnids, flooding bathrooms,
and bowl pockets. So when the man next
to me at lunch complains his espresso too small,
I hate him.

Why do I feel like this belongs to me? I can’t own
a country, the people. I can't possess mountains.
I want to grab hold of them because no onelet me own myself when it mattered.

When my father called me on the phone
and told me my birth saved their marriage,
for a while. I never understood how to barely
scratch perfection with my fingernails, why
my heels never fully planted
the ground, or what constitutes as godly,
because on the phone, only the perfect have control.

day 5

In the morning, after sky and cackle
of chickens, after the opening
of this window, some clouds, perched
under a clutch of villas hillside,
a castle and its ruins. Part of me,
the green-heart-of-Italy part, wants
a ruin of my own, a quaint flower box
or two, since the breeze could coax a rose
to blossom at breakfast, my heart right
in the yellow. I’m looking for some terror.
Waiting for a swift to mistake my window
for some heaven, stun itself, yet fly off.
So much hunger for infinities.
So many ways to miss them, too,
the way I miss the very instant prior
to abandonment.