My head is a hole
and you are the parasite. 
You have become the wind
that pulls, pulls and refuses to push.  

You are the sky that never opens
willingly into anyone's mouth, especially not those who wait.

There is a lone car on the empty highway
behind my house at midnight,
driving at full blast, blurring colors and sounds
onto the patient asphalt. 
I want to chase after it. 

No matter
how much salt I swallow
while holding my eyelids open
with my thumb
there is never enough to fill my stomach. 

We are all just layered words,
waiting to be cracked open
in the morning
like an egg spilled haphazardly on the kitchen tile. 

I refuse to be forgotten. 
I refuse to be squeezed down the bathtub drain like greywater. 

Sometimes, especially on days when I wake before the sun, 
I cry and don't know why.
I think most people do occasionally. 

Last week I received a brown envelope
full of old passports. 
I stood at the countertop and opened it with my nail.

I flipped through the top few
and examined my grandfather's picture,
the stamps, the places he'd been, his signature on the line. 

And then, at the bottom of the stack, there was my father. 
I knew without reading the name. 

He had the same half-smile
and open eyes and way he tilted his head. 

And then I was crying
and I think I was happy. 
I remember smiling
and licking a tear from my top lip.

I couldn't stop looking at that tiny worn passport photo. 
I couldn't figure out how all that rain got inside my heart. 

Sometimes, I think when we're really desperate
we see ourselves in people we love.