1.

You are still awake at exactly four-eighteen a.m., and you have not had a single drop of coffee, which you typically take with one teaspoon of sugar and just enough cream to make it two shades darker than your skin, one shade darker than his. He has been sleeping in your bed for three hours already. You are in the living room, counting the illuminated windows in the building across the street. You hear him making nightmare noises, but you do not go to him, you do not place your hand on his back to calm him. You are breaking routine.


2.

It rained for the first time all summer. You put your lips against the glass and felt the drops crashing into it. Your breath created a fog, but you were not looking. Just this once, you said, it was better to listen. There was a print left behind, a half-smile, an I-miss-you-but-it-hurts smile. The kind that gives us something to wonder about. The sky stayed grey. Pay attention, she told you. Pay attention.


3.

You make a list of your meaningful lovers. Chamomile tea. An old typewriter that your mother bought for you at a flea market when you were eight years old. The Atlantic, strictly from the New England coastline. A city or two. There are no names of boys. There are no pairs of hands.


4.

The room is weighed down with a heavy scent that you do not recognize. Your thumbs and fingertips are red from paint, but his own are flawless. Clean. Find the symbolism in that. And in the knot of your telephone cord that you blame, and the dream about running through a strange city soaking from a thunderstorm because you couldn't find a doorway to stand in, and someone somewhere was chasing. He does not wake you.

[I]
I have never adorned black
robes. I wonder what pills
cause your eyes to build
the shrouds around me.

[II]
I want to play piano,
and make my voice louder,
in attempts to translate
my thoughts into song.

[III]
A camera taken to the streets.
The lense didn't show them
correctly. The photos will never
ever compare to my memories.
I gave up. Putting the camera
in my pocket to let my eyes soak
the city in while they still can.

[IV]
I am either alone or suffocating.
Thirty-four hours, and you're
already (all ready) asking for pieces.

[V]
It would be easier
to give you my limbs.

Four rings, and my little sister
says hello, how are you, and tells me
about her dinner. I hear their voices
in the background. Five weeks,
I have flourished without her,
and before the receiver is passed,
my eyes become lakes that I never wanted
to fill. Ten minutes, is the message,
she will call you. I am shaking
already. I do not understand
my body or the attachments that blood
creates. I wish we could go back to the
days of innocence, when she loved me
truthfully. All the lies and substance
got to her. I miss when we could giggle
over cartoons and cheap tea. Does she
know how much she means to me, or
what her betrayal has done to wear me
down. I hope so. I need to feel safe.
I need her to know that shes loved.
I wonder if shes filling my head
with hope, and good memories
for nothing. False hopes.
She used to amaze me.
Sisters now, Sisters always.