Rush to my room Clothing askew Nod three times like ‘Might love you’ You told them I’d drowned They took word for whim But now they’ve all found I knew how to swim Watergirls, we’re not gonna buy it We’re already counting dead violets Heaven help the watergirls Fell in love with other worlds Blown all your time Rude, soft-eyed youth Chasing ghosts and Bending the truth You said I was gone Like acid washed skin But I’ve just moved on To healthier sins Now watergirls, we can’t see tomorrow Only concerned with the right here and right now Heaven help the watergirls Fell in love with other worlds Rue, rue, rue Some for me, some for you Boys, boys, boys, don't fight over me I don't love you and you never loved me Fuck to be or not to be Fuck your weeping willow trees Fuck your long soliloquies Won’t you stop stepping on my lines Heaven help the water girls We fell in love with the solace of other worlds

I’m always raising far more questions than I can answer Stirring up turbulence, changing my name and my stances A stanza in 6/8 then 2/4, then commontime standard Slowly realizing it’s to my own notions I pander In chicken scratch penmanship tell of my time as a dancer Years as a coloratura and lanes changed by chances Choose when to heal but know it rescinds comforts handed You’re coming down slow through the clouds now, go on, take a gander Alexander Where I wandered Big and grandstand My eyes wonder Keep that spire in your sightlines And you’ll be just fine People here put sugar on top of their cappuccinos Someone on Sunday got down on one knee and he proposed The rest of the girls we were with were a flurry of idol I’d been too preoccupied with being artfully woeful We lay on the floor in the sun from your third story window We stay out until the sun rises inhaling techno And dancing to nicotine streaming down in flashing spirals I'm learning that maybe to keep you there’s hopes I should let go Oh Alexander Where I wandered Will you still stand When I loose wonder I can already see the signs And I leave tonight And with that spire outside my sightline How do I define fine? I catch the blossoms that fall from the trees As we sit by the river in May’s evening breeze I watch you give someone directions back to the Spree Can you give me some to travel this river between? Alexander Lighter now Though I’ve gained a year Some stillborn thoughts buried here Cheers to nineteen

Little devil little devil Knobbly knees and black hair disheveled You better be, better really be very careful Don't end up like me Don't end up a vessel. She orders coffee same color as her hair She walks the halls of the quad with a vacant stare She’s lost all sense and feel, lost all sense of care She needs someone there Half past three and she’s the witching hour queen Far too tired to fall asleep Black ink on her skin Some say that it’s me In pale relief And a letter in a locket she keeps loosing She’s half the devil in her Only half the good and half the bad A rising water level pins her But she’d rather that than finish her undergrad She watches student films alone in the back row She watches as fads come, watches as they go She doesn’t really know If she’s too fast or slow Half past three and she’s the witching hour queen Far too tired to fall asleep Wearing your old mint green scrunchie Builds her effigy In the letter in a locket she keeps loosing Little devil little devil (witching hour queen) Knobbly knees and black hair disheveled (far too tired to fall asleep) You better be, better really be very careful Don't end up like me Don't end up a vessel. I watch her pass like a sweater turned inside out She only smiles when her past she touts She’s thirsty in the flood, sinking in the drought Don't even know what her own art’s about Half past three and she’s the witching hour’s heir Far too tired to destroy or to repair If I find her now, she might still be there She needs someone there I’ll be someone there

I remember the corner of Caroll and West Washington Avenue, I was just leaving the coffee shop as the storm brew: one of those summer fling things that comes with no warnings; just flung out of space. Chased away all the sunbathers on the lawn of the state capitol I took shelter under the awnings of Grace Episcopal’s big red door. No umbrella, just my first novella in a now sopping wet, water warped, spiral bound yellow notebook I was clutching under my thin flannel in a feeble attempt to salvage the pencil when you came to join me. We stood there in silence: midwestern stoicism at it’s finest until the clouds parted and you turned and smiled and wished me luck and went your way.

A wall in this city was built and torn down prenatal re: us But divide breeds ghosts And a host of them stand here to write A treaty graffitied on crumbling concrete You said you sensed no change in us But in saying that I knew you must Thought I’d always know where I stand with you But on this dance floor, subway platform that becomes less and less true It seems to me You say you’ve gotten so blunt here You’ll miss that when you come back home you say That I remind you of a bird sometimes Though you can’t put a finger on the reason or rhyme I chime in thinking it could be my flighty ways My pointed nose, or my lanky frame Your hair settles back on your cheekbones As the train cars pass by And you forget how quiet I can get sometimes And no one is at fault No one is to blame Everyone knows friction is the way you start a flame A block of black basalt a falsified exaltation Illumination in the dark of this Seedy subway station I thought maybe if I stayed still Blood would stop circulating Thought if I kept that space unfilled I could keep love percolating But standing ground Is not always the soundest decision No matter how much you wish it The rescission isn't ever what you envision; A saint in remission Makes a precision incision The excision of youth Is a tooth pull I went along with the vision; that’s the kindest thing to do But now they’ve gone and built up a wall between me and you You’re a woman this year I'm still twisted up in childish fears The beer goes down easy as the candle goes out Tears in tap water the sediment sorts out from doubt So it’s clear in two vials: the love and the loss I'm aware, at least, this time Of what both choices cost And no one is at fault No one is to blame Everyone knows friction is the way you start a flame A block of black basalt Some sort of forced explantation Education hard to accept in this Seedy subway station And I keep thinking about that evening You told me stones are like attraction: At the base of firmament If you’re feelin’ it You’re hard to sway But the months that you have been away Shift time, techno, tectonic plates And I hop the lines States ones and timezones Laws chewed in limestone Where’d my home go? When’s the sediment settle anyway? Oh, precious metal Have I mined these moments dry? Have I lost your love or is it just shifting with time? You point out something written on the wall But we’re too close I can't see it at all Say its the theses (with adult derision) That will activate and result in the schism I’ll need to take flight to witness Insight only sets in at a distance when melody’s decomposed, carried solely on diction Free from the fault lines and frictional fiction. And no one is at fault Hurt never is the aim Everyone knows getting burned is just part of the game A Rube Goldberg Gestalt Asphalt glaciers in ablation An ecosystem going extinct in this Seedy subway station