Weather for Headphones

we were driving down that stiff, narrow road to the
ferry with the flood levels on the tower like the one
in paris, and i stuck my hand out the passenger side and
the drops smacked my fingers like bugs and bullets and
every time a car passed you felt it, down to the bones,
through the seat and up your hips and i was afraid of my
hand ripping clean on the branch of a tree with seventy
mile force and i’ve always been afraid of that but the song
was on the speakers and nothing’s gonna change my world,
nothing’s gonna change my world, and it was raining
thumbtack bullets and my hand was cold stiff and narrow
like the drinks i have in the summer when the sun fills me
hot and sick to my stomach and the cars shook my body up,
up, through the scratched-up glasses on my nose, and we didn’t
know there was a curve up ahead and then Greg lost
the steering and he spun the wheel around and around and we
swung up and slid over the tiny gravel pebbles like ants
and all i could smell was rain, and for a moment i prayed
to God that i could live and not die ripped clean in
seventy mile force, and i forgot i had a heart beating
inside of me, and there was no one there when we stopped
in the grass and the mud, turned opposite the way the road
runs, and there wasn’t a single scratch on us except for my
arm which stung from the rain like thumbtack bullets, and then
we were driving down that stiff, narrow road again.

are you going
to ask me
how i feel? or
will you sit
and stare, without
words, without me?

I felt like the original version was incomplete. I like it better now.

i had a riot for breakfast-
doused the flames in maple,
scratched butter ditches in the
brown. I love mornings when

your eyes open extra wide, like
snowflakes out the door
catching your tongue, melting into
cars, each leading to another
adventure. It’s like

when you ask if we
are going to live
today, instead of dying. I
don’t have any answers, but

your smile covers me up
and down, down, down.
Like cars falling
into water. We’re alive.

i had a riot for breakfast
doused the flames in maple,
scratched butter ditches in the
brown. I love mornings when
your eyes open extra wide, like
snowflakes out the door
catching your tongue, melting into
cars, each leading to another
adventure, like when you ask
if we are going to live
today, instead of dying.

Sometimes I have dreams where
I feel more awake than asleep
the cold, cluttered past melted
into sensation. I want to live here
in this dream, in this place
of red autumn and blue winter. You
are in that dream, and when
I catch the light you open
your eyes. My dreams feel like
closed eyes in summer light,
then opened, the sepia tones
rushing past with the wind. I forget
that sometimes love
is not enough. I forget that
I cannot be like the other birds,
singing, silent, singing in the face of
blue winter. I have spent nights
awake, wishing never to dream,
waiting on the sun. It always comes.