Sunday, March 16, 2014

Moments

He stands in front of me, his hair dark and soggy with shower water, sloppily combed to the side,  sliding his delicate hands over the random shit on my nightstand, nonchalantly. He has no boundaries- what is mine is his, and that is all he has ever known. Absentmindedly, he fingers the edge of one of the books I haven't yet finished, rests on my camera, and pauses for a split second before he raises it to his face. He aims his probing little eye through the finder, focuses on something across the room, and then sets the camera back down, with a sigh. His eyes meet mine. He isn’t embarrassed that I'm watching him so closely; he isn’t that self-aware yet. He stretches up, up, reaching his scrawny arms above his head and yawns, loudly. 

I catch a whiff of something, soapy, clean.

"Are you wearing deodorant?"

"Yes,"  he answers, matter-of-factly. "It makes me feel like a man."

Then he turns and skips out of the room, his spiderman pajama shirt tucked into the back of his underwear.






Sunday, March 9, 2014

your urgent matters


only a few weeks into
it (whatever it was)
you came home

reeking of  
stained, soured hours
and stale smoke,
from the road

twisted in your sheets
as the door slammed
your hello

you pushed your tongue
feverishly inside me,
and my lips split red
against my teeth

didn’t even notice
the wet pillow, or
the damp on my cheeks
when finally,

you
were through

(how did you not see?) 
that night,
even the flowers were bleeding