—SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY, THE DOTS DIDN’T ALL CONNECT, AND PROMISE BECAME REGRET

…Today is snapping its fingers, saying, “Hurry up.  Get on with it already.”

…I never watched Mr. Rogers on TV when I was a kid, but I saw this recently and it made my skin prickle:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKy7ljRr0AA

…Wonderful things happen if you just let them.  Wonderful things happen all the time.

…Isn’t it interesting that sparrows and squirrels eat all day and they never obsess about weight?

…I asked your ghost: What do you think of death and such?

The reply, per usual: Not so much.

 …Nobody’s role is simple these days.

…Stay calm.  Keep it light.  Try not to lean.  A balance must be struck between pressure and concern.

…To be badly dressed is always a condemnation.

…I’m looking at both sides of the sky and each one tries to tell me a different story.  I’m looking at both sides of the sky and neither one is very blue.

…There’s no winning when it can come at you from every direction.

…No one will pick you up if you don’t know where you’re going.

…l couldn’t let go of the side for the longest time.

…I like to think I am a reliable narrator, but you never know.

…Someone asked me, “Why are you crying?”  Someone else asked me, “Why aren’t you?”

…Maybe love’s architecture is exposed when we try and fail at what we mean.

…And if I know you at all, I bet you’ve gone too far again.

…I keep trying to make it mean more, but it doesn’t.

…I’m jealous of the rain and I’m jealous of the wind.  They’re closer to your shadow.

…More than one thing can be true at the same time, or so I’ve been told.

…I’ve spent a lot of time lately trying to learn the lesson inside the lesson.  It’s not as easy as you might think.

…At the door we stand pondering, trying to get it open, say what we mean and how afraid we are that no one is even on the other side.

…Dear God,

I thought I saw you last week.  You looked very pensive sitting on a park bench.  Was that you?

—I REMEMBER ALL THE FINAL WORDS YOU TOLD ME

My Eyelids Think They’re Something Else

But first I should tell you that my eyelids are known to tell lies.  They say, We schizophrenic, dyslexic and corrosive.  They say, We provide shelter from the storm.  They say, We have killed a number of random hitchhikers and buried them in the desert where they’ll never be found.

My Ex liked to lick them, my eyelids, she with her serpent’s tongue, so long and scaley, like a sundried salamander without legs.  Sometimes she’d slather my pupils with bubbly saliva.  Other times, she nibbled my eyelashes off.  She deemed such acts erotic.  The wetter, the better, she said.  And since I was a virgin, since I had never scaled a sexual peak, let alone reached one, i never balked at her proclivities, never thought them odd in any way.

My new wife no longer looks me in the eyes, no longer notices the strange strength residing in my eyelids.  I try to surprise her in the morning, leaning over her side of the bed, hovering there, waiting for her to wake, but she’s onto me and now wears an eye mask under an eye mask, both of which are overlaid on top of two Band-Aids.

I plan on giving my eyelids to science.  In fact, I have them right here, sealed in this Mason jar filled with disinfectant.  The challenge will be getting them to the lab in time.  I can hear my wife in the other room, on the phone, her corrosive voice trembling as she says, “Hurry, please.”

--IF I COULD ONLY TELL YOU

                                     A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing

She looked inside the well of me, way down into the gray, gulley of my throat, and said, You know, a girl is a half-formed thing.

She said, Even from way up here, I can smell the sins of your uncles and cousins.  They’re still hideous, but they taste like stale cinnamon, once spiced and threatening, neutered now by age, but not forgotten.

She said, I could read your palm, it would be easier, right, but this is more interesting, don’t you think?  I mean, look at how your tonsil bell wobbles, so nervous to have me this close.

Chuckling, she ran a jagged fingernail down the length of my jugular and tapped out some kind of code, piercing tufts of skin.

She said, You used to dream big.  You used to notice cloud shapes and the way a sprig of lavender can cleanse any pallet, if its freshly picked.  She said, You used to laugh a whole lot more.

She shifted a bit, owning my eyes now--instead of the endless cavern that is my mouth--clamping them inside a crescent wrench.

She said, A girl is a half-formed thing because she’s just learning whom to trust, which isn’t at all easy, since many of the monsters scream gibberish while their claws are busy shredding skin, and snapping bones.

When I tried to reply, she slammed my jaw shut like a well-oiled dresser drawer.

She said, Listen to me.  She said, A girl is a half-formed thing, but I’m counting on you to find the other half, deliver it to me whole, and explain how one piece fits into the other, and why they even should.