So, here's this:

Every third breath is made by a boa constrictor.
He lives in my ribcage, you see,
and sometimes like to see what his musculature can do compared to mine.

If every night star story started with a clear light,
what would happen to cloud cover?
What would happen to all the silver linings?

I felt what you meant when you said sometimes you yearn more for a body to hold,
someone whose arms say more than their breath,
than their breadth.
Boa knew it all along,
but I've just been letting him grow and gripe.

I knew it all along, that it would feel better then worse,
as he grew he'd need more space,
he'd demand more space and take up more space.
Except I always thought space was just a place for stars,
and if you needed to moonbounce,
you always had another planet available.
Except you didn't, and I didn't know if I wanted one, or a different you.
I want bits and pieces, I want to build my own puzzle with preference,
500 pieces that are hand picked by yours truly.

A puzzle is still a puzzle if all the pieces mostly fit, right?
Even in designated cutouts, with enough use they fade,
and become questionable in their habits.
"Are you sure this goes here? These reds are not the same"
"Sure hon, it's been like that for years, it's supposed to be like that".
When do you seek your better fitting other half, though?

Boa can twine, at least. Better to be fluid and versatile, than stock and habit.

I like to read love poetry to help me fill in your outline.
Love poetry meaning,
I got my guts kicked out by a falling star the other night.
Your sweater came unraveled after a dose of moonshine.
Someone forgot to turn on the Eiffel Tower again
(they must have flipped my switch instead).

I guess what I'm trying to say is,
I'm holding myself in a continuous state of
"why can't you just take out the garbage"
and
"my garbage
(socks and kleenex and so many strands of DNA)
is all over your floor and maybe I'll pick it up later"
and
"leave it, don't touch it, so perfect, right now, even if it's trashy"
and
"I found this box and I want hide every remnant of any interaction and I make big messes but every Sunday is my cleaning day and I will remove every trace of you and me and socks and I and intertwined DNA"

I like it when my guts scream.
Not from the Indian food
(no thank you)
but from my imagination,
always four score and seven years of full speed ahead.
I like to think my mucosal membrane knows how to respond
when assaulted with good life intention.

Infinite.

Like how many times you can take a picture,
with your mind,
of we intertwined.

Like three chords.
Your pick.

Like each idea becoming a suggestion,
an open ended request,
like the innocence behind "inquisitive"
that is lost in "inquisition".

Like the questions I mean to ask you,
but I'm not sure you'll be listening
at that moment in time.
Stopwatch.
Dewdrop.

Like how I mean to hold
you
r hands
r heart
you.

Like the limit of the tangent of x as it approached y.
I want to curve
and parenthesize around your body.
We will diverge.
We are inverse.
We are combustable.

Weather whethers whither wow?
Picture Oregon Trail, version 2, the runaways.
A little banjo with your standstill open plain,
always waving wheatgrasses,
beckoning with wide fingertrails.

I tried to ford the river,
but my fucking oxen died.

Each breath worse than the last,
feeling filth in my bones,
dysentery behind every accidental shotgun wound.
What do you do when you know two right answers,
when everything feels correct?
Multiple choice,
multiple guess,
multiple uglies.

You touch my stereo,
volume and fingernails tune.

You are a string bean on a summer day.
Think of this- how sunbeams cross string tangles and dirt
to smother you in heat and life
(photosynthesize).

To me and beyond,
the wires and wooden support
trellis to lattice to framework to explosion,
you bear fruit and burst alive.

You've got to keep
your heart young.

So, we've got Venus.
This little babe of a planet,
always in the shadow of her big sister Earth
(she got to try everything first,
I guess that's why she has her remnants
drifter all over. Some people get crabs,
she got Earthlings.)
But we all know Venus was the hotter of the two.
A little more dense, sure,
but babe had curves.

She had her spotlight, though.
12 hours of high fashion runway.

Sometimes,
I miss you with such ferocious intensity
that I start to wonder if it's you I actually miss.
Perhaps, it's simply the idea of you,
or how my puzzle shelf seems to now be missing a piece.

You asked me how it was possible
for two people to be able to share such depth
and such shallow waters together.
I wasn't sure how to tell you how deep those waters went.

It's like your black, your notes, the vision of sheet music moving
once the player gives life to the sound. It's how sometimes,
you feel certain. Others, you feel a million rays of doubt and trouble
and construct that weren't made by your hands.

It's when you can't fall asleep because you're hacking up a lung,
and when John Green makes you want to cry and throw the book and pick it up and whisper
IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.
I still haven't figured out if I'm talking to him, the book, or you. Or me.

It's when I wish you were in my bed, just so I could lean over and kiss your forehead,
with the light still on and your snores filling the room.
I'd probably take that back once your chainsaw uvula nasal passages filled the room,
but as for right now, my starfish doesn't quite tuck so neatly.

Unpacking
is a daunting task.
Take clothes, for instance.
Every slice of fabric has rubbed you raw,
taking skin cells and hair cells and a facet
of the person who you used to be.
You (and he and they and we) are layered between strings.

You are intricate.
Tracing neurotransmissions down your spinal column,
from freckle to L4,
turning slow motor momentum.
It's my weighted moment,
my wordplay peachfuzz.

Silence, silencio, silent night,
simple sectors seething softly,
like a whistling tea kettle with
mutational falsetto (puberphonia).

Words are flowing,
just tripping their way around my e lin- sheath.
If I had to guess,
I would assume that neurochemical firings occur to the beat of softspoken dubstep.

Sometimes when I come (home),
I want to make a found poem out of
all the memories I never had
/(have yet to create).

It's all those words that I wanted to apply,
like "free" and "full" and "release"
and "unencumbered ventriloquist" and
"owls".
Just for the sake of sinking my teeth
into someone else's dictionary, vocabulary
(early morning rituals.
Perhaps I can slink into someone else,
if I adopt their lexicon,
and prepare my coffee the same way).

What are you spewing into the atmosphere?
What are you defining,
bringing into breath based on your action and reaction?

I could feel my hands
(plucking, grasping, sucking, tearing)
your letters and phonemes and characters and verbal intent.
They're still on my pillowcase, I just don't know if you want them back.
I left mine buried in your red hot chili peppers lights,
you can keep them.

We have so many different endings.

I was never any good at saying goodnight
or goodbye for that matter
My hands are clenching this mug,
willing it to keep me awake.

My night won't end,
and I promise I'll figure out who I am,
if I can only stay up for 15 more minutes.
Witching hour, 12:34 syndrome,
what's behind the curtain of conscious number 3?

I'd spend my whole life hiding my heart away,
if I knew it wouldn't burn whenever I thought about
you dropping me off at the train station,
skyscrapers and kissed foreheads.
Every single time, it just sounds more honest
when Brandi says it.

They say you can read tea leaves.
I'd rather ground my fist into coffee
and see what truth lies underneath the soil.

When I say, do you feel me?
I'm not meaning in a literal sense.
Get your hands off of my mindset.

My pores are sucking you in.
I'm noticing this tone, through all my words, and warps and pieces,
it's like wordplay but less fun and more caustic.

My peach tree, shaken, branches splayed
(I really like your peaches won't you shake my tree?)
Peach, just a small variation away from bleach,
which is a variation of blech,
which is what is often going through my mind when I think of ways to respond to you.

My sparkling diamond of a
(kitchen floor)
soul, scrubbed red raw,
sometimesIwishIdidn'tchangeasmuch
asIpretendIhave,orrecognizethatIhaven't,really.

I want to eat crack
(s in the linoleum)
all day, on my patio, and be surrounded by good vibes.
Vibesvibesvibes.

My ache is raw,
like an egg freshly cracked,
or the red meat on the counter.
Your flesh (my meat),
my red gaping open string of words and saliva.

This had every intention of being a light, swifty thing.
Furiously twittering (twitter wickedly),
my mind isn't always this dark I promise.
I promise a million things, but I'm still trying to understand myself.
Understand myself, oversit yoursociety.

Why do you take your pictures with your open mouth?
You are drooling all over my lens.

You were always better in theory.
The images I created for myself,
the moments I wished we were in.
The hypothetical has no abrupt ending,
you see.

Once upon a time,
I believed you were telling me about 12-string guitars.
On my bed,
about how it's easier to play them because the strings are so close together,
it's like you can hit all the right notes without even trying.
You tried to make me sing that night.
But then I realized I had that conversation with someone else,
in a different setting completely.
It changes our ending,
you see.
The bed sang it's own lonely song that night.

I can tell myself all the right stories,
weave my own intricately, beautifully detailed and intoxicated rhythms,
but that won't bring you here.
Oh no, lord no boy,
that won't bring you anywhere closer to me,
to here, to now, to us, to a "we".

Did you know you're a dirty contradiction?
When my mind fills up with radar and S.O.S via sonar,
I go into hypertonic state;
my limbs are flailing to still,
to specific and intentional.
You move me to intentions.

My arms would rather be moving as they please
ebb and flow and high and low,
but instead,
my thumbs tap each key,
hoping to convey
every
single
possibility.
From the swift and
(oh haha)
to the lengthy
(could be everything, intention, soulquickheartbodymindlove)
my  breath is my burden.

Just understand,
I'm hurried to explain everything
that one person
can try to explain in one
single
lifetime.

I want you to understand my intention,
more then my action.
My words are my bond.
But so often, they are skewed.
They are stumbled.
They are misinterpreted.
They are human.
Take them as they are,
as they are meant to be.

The brain is never too old to learn new tricks.
Like how you eventually mold to every hand you hold,
even if you've never held it before
(especially if you hope to hold it for a long, long time).

Your neurons are always evolving and adapting,
from the first time you open your eyes and your retinas
(oh your retinasandconesandrodsandthereis
SO
MUCH
MORE
goingonbehindthescenesthanwegiveitcreditfor)
are pounded by light,
by images,
by focus and abstraction coming into clarity and comprehension.
Did you know that you can sing your way through a stutter?
I wish I could tell that to the heart palpitations
currently coursing through John Doe's ventricles.
But that's besides the point.

Your neurons, the same one you were born with, far fewer that you'll die with,
can rewire themselves.
Tell yourself you're dying enough times,
and maybe your brain will trick itself into living.

My words have gone walking again.
They got up and left,
slamming the door behind them.
I think it's been a long time coming and a slow spiral downwards;
lately I've been speaking in euphemisms and grandeur that only
I can make sense of
(maybe my jokes just stopped being funny to everyone around me).

My words have gone walking again.
They slipped out the open window,
caught a ride west and said,
"She'll be fine on her own. She always is."

Third times the charm,
my words have gone walking again.
They took off on a horse with no name
and hopped a train to Clarksville.
Alphabet soup has come to life,
but not with my choice in spoonerism.
My head's not quite in my hands,
but my shoulders are keeping it hinged.
Come back soon, my mouth feels empty
and my tongue has no flap nor tap left without you.

Sometimes I only think I drink so I'm brave enough to talk to you.
To let the swallows burn some courage into me,
tell me what I'm too afraid to tell myself.
Let me feel what I'm too afraid to feel, too ashamed to admit.
Not that I'm raging, nor am I addicted.
(But I bet that's what they all say).

Rum and coke is my drink of choice.
Feel that sunshine on the sand, the paradise of a paradox.
Funny how I've never actually been to a real beach,
with a real ocean,
but pretend it's the only place I ever want to be.

You make me ashamed of myself.
I don't want to be your mistress, your last call before the lights go on.
I've never promised myself anything less than everything.
What I want, I make for myself.
Not my parents, not my sister, not for you, not for God.
I give myself a reason to exist.
My raging hormones
(loneliness from only conversing with disordered populations)
shouldn't be an excuse to be a second choice,
the one you can claim if the current girl "doesn't work out".

My spit is all over these words,
I picture them more as a slam then a reading.
I want you to feel my truth,
feel my crumble as the walls come down but bombs still drop.

I am not sleeping,
because I'm too busy thinking about which corner
God is going to jump out at me from.

"SURPRISE!
You've been looking for me for years".
(he'll say)
Gotcha!

And then I woke up.

1010.
I wonder what that means in binary.
Iloveyou.
thankyou.
yourpoetrysucks.
picklesonthemoon.
refrigerator.

The night ended with Samson
(and Regina).

Sometimes my dreams smell like patchouli.
or car wrecks, or airports.
Exhaust fume, gasoline;
only when I'm dreaming of you, though.

I hit 1000.
2+ times,
but I hit it running and sputtering,
left it on the ground to come back to tomorrow.
Sorry,
I was just so exciting about having a thou,
in the sand.
Have people really come back to me, and kept scanning their eyes
over my pages?
Weird.

I like you better when you have a beard.