The silence between us is growing,
like bacteria in a wound;
pulling apart,
like the universe;
burning,
like the center of the earth.
I wish for wings to cross the distance.
I wish for a sword to battle the monsters.
I want to make everything perfect,
then, I am sure, you will love me.
You will see me in the light of the stars.
You will hold my face between your hands.
“Ah,” you’ll say,
“Ah.” and you’ll understand
it was always me.

Arrange your books by size.
Arrange your books by color.
Arrange them by how badly they have hurt you.
This one made me cry,
this one made me wander the city at night,
looking for ghosts,
looking for You even though You have never existed.
This one taught me how to write.
This one taught me to dream.
Arrange your books by urgency,
by passion, by lust, by horror.
Then write.

I am
disintegrating.
Striking,
bursting,
burning.
My bed is an operating table
where I die each night.

I sit quietly beside the window,
listening to the rain,
becoming the rain,
wishing I had problems
as small as falling,
and as big as drowning.

It’s not love if he can’t make you cry.
Forgive me, I am foolish, I am still learning.
Forgive me, there is still a child inside of me.
I am no longer afraid of the dark.
I am afraid of the light.
Swapping poetry does not mean we are in love.
Wake up, wake up. The sun is rising.
Fire, thunder, water, ice.
On a map, an inch is a mile.
Your teeth are stuck inside of your skull.
I like your hands when they are hurting me.
I like your eyes when they are not looking at me.
Don’t you ever get tired of giving giving giving?
Sometimes I play a game, where I lay perfectly still, eyes open, holding my breath, pretending I am dead. But my heart keeps beating and I eventually gasp.
My mom used to tell this story about how you have to poke a hole in the sky to let the light fall in.
My dad opens beer bottles on the patio, wondering.
Maybe it’s better to be struggling than dead.
I don’t know, maybe it’s not.
Maybe I am a worm waiting for talons.
Maybe I am hiding in the ground.

I am The Fool,
hanging upside down from a tree,
hanging on your every word,
hanging in the balance.
The hangman,
a bag over my face,
blackness,
silence,
a sudden drop
as if god flicked his wrist
and said ‘I do not believe.’

Oh, delicate intricacies,
as if an insect’s wing
has become me.
Wooden beams
and light falling like clouds
and music in soft songs.
I am so unbearably fucking full.
Of poems, emotions, colors.
First, I am a tree.
Branches,
twigs,
woodchips,
splinters,
sawdust,
nothing.

by Amanda La Valley

People are the same everywhere.
Dying, sad, grotesque, lonely.
I turn around,
a full circle.
The moon in the sky.
A nipple,
a bellybutton,
a freckle.
I memorize star maps,
this is Callisto,
the bear,
she turns around the poles.
This is Cassiopeia,
spending half her time upside down,
who believed in beauty.
These are my palms.
They are not constellations,
but they have seen stars.
Magnificence.
A life moves towards the end
and they tell me a birth is the beginning
but I don’t know.

by Amanda La Valley

If this is the way the world works,
dissolve me
until you find what needs to be here,
because it’s not me.
I am blood and milk.
I am a bowl of each.
I am burning
burning burning.
I am the river separating two cities.
I am a star in the heart of darkness.
I am a cat who licks its paws.
Strings stretched across an expanse,
tuning and writhing like
pitch.
Scratches down your back in the morning.
A path is just a line in the dirt,
a red mark down your spine,
a string pulled across the universe.
a bridge going one way.

A man walks into a cafe
and writes a piece of music so beautiful
he forgets everything he knows.
Like the son who he hasn’t spoken to in 6 years,
and the bruise around the waitress’ eye,
and how uncomfortable he feels inside of his body.
And there is no cafe,
and there is no man.
Only the music.
A magic song,
when played he can remember things;
the first time he tasted an orange
and the smell of his mother’s perfume
while she held him as a baby,
and he knows things, too,
things he shouldn’t be able to,
like how his son dreams about wolves almost every night,
and the waitress is still in love despite her husband’s fists,
and that his body is like a shell that the crab wears
and there is only
the music, the music, the music.

by Amanda La Valley