The size of the place proved too much.
A vast openness, half of that apartment
was already too much.

Where once I should have remained placid,
I threw arms out bracing for no impact.

Dead summer Indiana nights spent sipping tea
in any girl’s apartment after listening to highway hum

In the wind today, the trees tossed their heads in pure abandon,
shaking their sex all over the cars in my neighborhood.

There in the driveway,
where Ethan Reid etched
his muddy name in wet cement

White wine and a cobalt Chagall.
I find myself transfixed by the ache

Slicked back like riverwater on moss,
my hair in slivers almost cauterized to scalp,
kept back in a newsie’s cap for picture day.

Atoms, with their inherent emptiness and refusal to be observed. There are no spinning solar systems of red, blue and black orbs. There is, maybe a green blur of subatomic uncertainty. Everything you know is filled with vast expanses of nothing.

Where there is a road sign, I ignore it.
Eighty MPH in the countryside – running
dark and in radio silence just for the hum

One day, we will collide.
There is nothing that can
be done to prevent this.

A five month dry spell
is moving hours
in several goes

On feet not built for back seats,
Courtney, Andrew, Emily and I
scrambled across a rain-swept
Chicago Loop parking lot
looking for Andrew’s car.

Streetlamps stained the snow the color of old photos
the night I left the library too late for a bus.

The sun there drew intricate and pale
damask patterns on the playground dirt.
The shadows were dim green and hazy
in the chalky dust blown up in breeze.

The whole town collapsed
into a single instant that Friday

My fingers lingered on a carving knife
in the sink of Emily’s mom’s cheaply rustic
suburban kitchen,

Split off center, at an unexpected angle,
now a log and a shim and no studs. Tim insists
it’s fine, the dog won’t know the difference.

We were giants, the Anderson girl
and I, in the flatbed of Jason’s pickup.
We could do no wrong but to each
other, and we did.

In one corner, weighing in at 250, the poet at 12.
Eating for comfort, for company, to quiet his general
distaste for everything.

In the chilly damp air of late summer, the lonely
croaks of bullfrogs, in their kingly stances, bellowing
from their swollen necks the songs of lacking love.

You, whispering hymns in my ear,
one orange saturday morning:
the dear uninvited.

Silence, bleeding slow through the mall,
each cough finding tile to ricochet from
back to the sender’s ear.

In Cocoa Beach, manatees
floating on their backs watch stars
and daydream about beating
Neil Armstrong at his own game.

Venetian blinds bend away
when dodging a blow. Force
not deflected is simply
passed through.

In the mornings before I left, I didn’t know better
than to leave my hand at the small of your back,