SONNET 1

it’s been a month since i sent you the 
crayon-paint-pencil image attempt to capture 
the cafe in Lansingburgh where we ate formal polish dinner
overpriced and empty and so stupid in the early germs of love
before you took me on what i now scowl fondly at as 
your best-of tour, backwoods gas stations soft serve
hot dogs coke in a can on a porch swing 
we scrambled up the green shale canyon even saw 
a naked woman walking like an actual nymph 
decided she must have been ok although in retrospect 
what was she doing feet bare and so many razor shards  
i sent you my artist effort on christmas eve, the training was full
i won’t see you i was waitlisted and still broke
i can’t become a healer  like you, oozing california 
my child bearing years leaving their sweat stain on your 
self actualizing years, you did not respond to the drawing you have
refined your borderlands i saw on venmo u paid your ex to 
ghost write your hinge remember when you schooled me on
hot plastics and frying eggs we lived beneath a burnt out attic
football player wallpaper still peeling off the little boy’s bedroom wall
creepy hallway the heat would go out and you’d caterpillar sleep 
in an explosive goose feather tube i’d sleep on the fold out when i 
hated you it smelled like rust, weird powder in the creases 
but also there were toxic balcony sunsets we loved them 
you’d make me your grandpa’s margaritas
pucker salt you oozing california then too 
i could drink 100 and river gaze
an otter, tugboats, trash drifting by the 
pink orange setting world
oil film like a dirty wish 
on everything trying
to move