the you i write to.

i got to read this one on stage at the nuyorican poet's cafe in ny.

i can revisit your advances wit lids sealed and views skewed

tight into columns bouncing to and from ideals

still waiting to be dressed by your lips, i can hardly stand it.

s**t man, take me from here and release me, we live to breath remember?

remember me, your go to girl?

now somehow i gotta spell it out phonetically, 

with reverend's breath wrapped around the last syllables 

riding the air like the final whip of winters tail.

and i don't even remember if i said the words

or always just thought'em real loud

"burn" in a bathroom with a bottle and a blade

slippery tub and a skylight promising better times

and there again is you, the you i always write to.

you have pressed yourself into lizard pants

writhing around in my nearly faded memories 

backing out of the driveway of my sensibility

taking shelter in my tangled heart strings

leaving the coast and the breath of a promise 

made in a different decade

by a little girl who would go to bed without brushing her teeth,

picking her face, dreaming of a life with a man who was not only her best friend

but her greatest alia, always in the corner with a spit bucket and a smile

something somehow resembling normal

but that was never us kid.

we are the souls who have lived for lifetimes

we are the ones who feel so deeply 

a fly flappin' it's wings causes earthquakes

and mothers making mistakes because of husbands 

and husbands making mistakes because of fathers

and latch key kids sitting on the stoop of 

oh my god what should i be doing

and rock collections getting left as houses literally get picked up and moved

to better neighborhoods ones that don't reek of the memory of being raped

and left for days in closets without food or water.

we are the ones who write to each other

you are my you

the one i always write to 

with perfect pieces of porous rock letting the water flow through

you are my you

you will stand with me and make me stronger

you will allow me to love longer and harder without excuse.