I Don't Know What Any of Us Are

I don't know what any of us are.
I don't know where any of us are.

I know Jasmine loves vintage Alice in Wonderland prints
and her colors
are other-worldly, bottom of the ocean beautiful-
strawberry blonde hair and Kingfisher blue eyes.
I know she's afraid of the toxins in tampons
like there is cancer in her stars
and my cycle starts moving in cync
with her chart as we fall
in love over coffee and sex work each morning.

I know Ari's wicked funny, one of my favorite people,
when he's not on the hunt, hurting for a hit,
smoking crack in my basement- putting orajel on my lips
because he says, "Who doesn't love to feel their mouth disappear?"

I know we're all fucked up in some major way,
but our inner children were peaking out from the rubble
of the wreckage of our lives,
opening their tired from crying eyes
when they heard the ice-cream truck music
in the arpeggio of our laughter
as we traded glimpses of our belly buttons in bed

before you broke the glass of our prism
with your hunger and your hurting,
with your self-hatred and your guilt
coming down from your high,
your eyes were demonic
when you asked me where was Sarai
your lover who died
the girl everyone thinks you killed

you wailed and wailed,
and wanted to know
where is she where is she
as if I was hiding her in my hands
that were small and shaking
and human
and I
cannot help you.


I don't know what any of us are.
I don't know where any of us are.

I know Caro like the back of my life,
the inside of my eyes, line for line
and deep, primal crying.
She exhaled her orgasm into my lips
and I saw us as some kind of Cerberus,
connected at the neck and powerful as hell
in our secrets and our work
and our watching of whales,
our proud love standing
infinite octaves and chakras above
shame,
but oh how easily we frayed
fighting over a bone.

I don't know what any of us are.
I don't know where she is, where I am,
where there is peace
or a body to call home

but I know terror
so I take refuge in you
who opened my front door to a dying praying mantis
that came into the warmth
just before the Indian summer cicadas stopped singing.

I know we are all that we have, for real,
and the world is so troubling
so I will always love the troubled
and the question isn't of escape,
but learning to break
without pain,
keeping the heart an open hearthfire
no matter who comes to take without asking,
no matter how hard it rains.

I just love you. Is that ok?