Black Cat

I know it's early but my first nanowrimo prompt is "black cat"

I hope tomorrow a black cat crosses my path and brings four years of bad luck cascading down on my head.
I hope tomorrow all the four leaf clovers shrivel and die under my feet as we dance on the grass.
I hope tomorrow I open an umbrella indoors and dance until it rains, pouring sweet water across our face as we look up to the heavens, wondering who blessed the world so we met each other.
I hope tomorrow I break a mirror while I'm walking underneath a ladder with an upside-down horseshoe hung on the top.
Kiss me under this ladder surrounded by the glittering shards of our old lives.
I hope I never get the bigger half of the wishbone
I hope the only rabbits I find don't even have feet.
'Cause baby, when I'm with you nothing can bring me down.

Hang the moon

You're so cute that I wish you came in gift wrap, just so I could unwrap you and squeal like a child on Christmas morning.
You're cuter than an anthropomorphized robot looking disappointed.
You're so cute I want to stick you in a muffin tin and munch on you while you're still too hot. I can't even wait for you to cool down.
You're so cute my roommate's Labrador puppy told me she was jealous of your smile.
You're so cute I would hang the moon in the sky just for you.
You're so cute I wonder if all the stars in the galaxy might look more beautiful arranged in the shape of your face.

I wouldn't bring you the moon

The thing is I didn't plan to feel this way.
This summer I was fine.
I counted the stars to the sky and I marveled at the constellations
I thought your eyes were like the sky on a clear day
But I wouldn't bring you jewels from the deepest crevice of the ocean.

But after last Friday
I think about the way you run your hand through your hair when the sun comes up
And I think about the shape of your eyes when the sun goes down

It's just that I really liked the ways the stars look
Galaxy spread across the sky
And now I wonder
Might they look better arranged in the shape of your face?

I was so happy on dry land but
Now I'm thinking the bottom of the ocean isn't so far away after all.

Tonight she missed you

Tonight she missed you so bad it hurt, physically.
Her intestines cramping in pain, pinpricks of pressure in her eyes.
Something crawling out of the depths of her throat.

Tonight she listened to Rachel Patten's "Stand by you" a total of fifteen times on repeat
Which, given that the video is almost four minutes long
Is a total of nearly an hour
Of a song that makes her want to cry.

Tonight she told herself It's getting better on repeat
She did not count the number of times
Whispered like a mantra into her mourning gut.
Tonight she did not believe herself once.

She thought about the mountain goats line "The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you/ And that you are standing in the doorway."
And she believed that.
She has written this poem three times in her head,
And twice deleted it on this computer screen.
Forgive her,
It seemed so self indulgent.
So full of self pity.

And you're not there, standing in her doorway.
She has not checked once
But she knows you are one world a way,
Three hours before her.
No mater what she hoped.
You can't lend her your wings from across the world.

She wishes you hadn't changed her so much.
That thought also makes her intestines hurt.
You're not standing in her doorway.
It's three in the morning and she misses you.
Forgive her.

An open letter to the person who left the dishes in the kitchen sink

An open letter to the person who left the dishes in the kitchen sink

And I got out of bed and descended the stairs
Smiled, and kissed the gentle morning airs
Heard the birds singing their fond morning wishes
Went to the sink, and there . . . I saw dishes!

That sweet, dewey, sun-speckled, cloud-dappled morning
Came to a sharp sudden halt with no warning
My leisurely morning was pushed past the brink
The greatest of tragedies, dishes in the sink!

I wonder, dear friend, should these dishes I wash
For if I do then my skink will be spotless
And then if I don't they might sit here all day
And draw in fruit-flies and stink and just stay!

And please know that I'm sad and I'm not just nit-picky
When dishes are dirty I feel deeply icky
It's hard when they're dirty to feel like I'm home
And it's so deeply awful that I'm writing this poem. . .

From a place of real love, and good honest discourse
I know that it's hard to keep clean a shared resource
But just know it brings up some bad places I've lived
Where no one else cleaned, only I did.

I don't think this poem will convince you to clean
The dishes, or change this filthy, piled, fruit-fly'ed up scene
I don't know if this letter will force you to rethink
The way that you up and left dishes in the sink.

This letter's a plea, and a futile one
This letter's a jab, and it's made in good fun
But maybe the next time you'll pause and consider
Do you want to be the subject of another open lettter?

Underwater

Imagine being at the bottom of the ocean
Imagine a world of water above you
How heavy it is
How dark

Imagine crying at the bottom of the ocean
Only you're not sure if you're crying.
You're under water
And you're cold
And you're holding your breath.

It feels like you might be crying
Or maybe you're starting to forget what it was like to cry
On land. What did the air used to smell like?

Erotica

Consider sunlight dripping across your shoulders
And brushing your lips scarlet
I think about your tongue
I try not to.
I try not to think about your voice naked in the air
The way your husky "please" sounds
In my mind you taste like the bluest, sunshiny-ist day in fall
You taste like a fresh apples
Plucked straight off the tree
Dripping with ripe fruit
Bared of leaves
Branches writhing towards the sky.
Please

So what?

So what happens now?
I've woken up crumpled between your bedsheets
For the third time this month
And I look over and your sleeping shoulders
A world away on the other side of the bed.

An open letter to my Spanish teacher

An open letter to my Spanish professor 
And your concern that you forcefully “outed” me when we were doing a class dialogue
Wherein you chose me to fill the role of mujer on a date with an hombre
And at the end instead of saying (in Spanish) I was tired and goodbye
I looked that hombre straight in the eye and said me gusta mujer
Which is a ballsy move except that it’s pretty bad Spanish and so
When you asked me to stay after class to assuage your own guilt that you had forcibly outed me
I found it simultaneously laughable and punitive.
Professora, if you didn’t know I was gay at this point may I direct you to
Exhibit A: My eyebrow piercing
Exhibit B: My Jewish stick and poke tattoos
Exhibit C: My undercut
Exhibit D: My sparkly lip-print crop top
Exhibit E: My literal ring of keys I carry to class
Exhibit F: The rainbow pin on the front of my bag that reads “Not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you”
I know it’s Spanish class but you can read English and I know everyone else can too
Professora, I have not been in the closet since before you knew what gay was
I know coming out is an ongoing process but it’s hard to imagine anyone anywhere considering me una heterosexual
And also, I had a bus to catch
And when you asked me to stay after and reassure you that my feelings hadn’t been hurt by my mid-class outburst of queerness
I was amused that you thought anything you had done had forced me out from between the cobwebbed coat hangers and moth-eaten fur coats and into the light and furthermore,
Professora, I have a bus to catch that doesn’t care about your guilt over being a bad feminist
And maybe you could take that guilt and include some queer-inclusive vocabulary so instead of saying me gusta mujer I could say yo soy una lesbiana and also
Have you considered that every example in the textbook is una mujer y un hombre and maybe also like including the genderneutral pronoun elle
Instead of holding me after class so that I could personally tell you that you shouldn’t feel guilty and
Don’t lose any sleep over it, professora, and don’t use this as a learning experience to change any of the curriculum and just maintain the status quo
No, I don’t mind missing my bus to soothe your ego, professora
But, as we learned to say in our job interview unit, gracias por la concideración.