You are west
black oceans on crystal.

And I have seen the way you move with lust
like a vulture
with eyes that crave flesh
like there's nothing left
                                      to
                                          eat.

Where’s the step between comfort and apology because I think I’ve yet to find that place.
Instead I think my blood will boil before it curdles.
(Leave memories of how your skin made me feel)
Where do you turn to in the dark and who do you watch.
When your footsteps shatter the silence you left when you said you would never go.  
(But you left anyway)
How can you expect to trust a soul, if you don’t even trust your own.

And why have you gotten me stuck in the place between the two.

I grow gardens between my thighs
and bloom roses red like rubies.
My spine is lined with barbed wire for those who dare to climb me.
I bleed rivers of deadly nightshade
and sharped thorns between my shoulders.
Every inch of this golden body is dripping in amber honey.

I fell asleep to you after binges of Chinese food. And movies playing too loud, warping my mind to include translucent holographic dreams and 90's cartoons.
I am used to quick moving waters, cutting the banks of the rivers that flow through my bones. I am versed in their tongue but not quite you- stopped and steady after nights of solitude.
How can I sleep with insomnia that tastes like the sweetest dessert that has ever graced my lips, my tongue, my skin. I am too messy to be compartmentalized. I am too messy for you. I am too messy. I am.

You taste like heaven.
I swear every inch of your skin is woven from amber honey.
And sometimes I think you are my Sun.
And that I am
Weak
To the pull of your gravity.
I could orbit you for eternity and be caught in your spell immortally.

I am not scared of the dead.
I am scared of the living.
I am scared of broken bones.  
Of the way they curl my skin like pages torn from an old book, simply by slicing my flesh with their words.
I have felt enough for this life and the next.
I have no fear left for the deceased.
For the ghosts of those past. They hold no power over my mortality.
But the living- they have stabbed and ripped and cut like I am an animal ready for consumption.
I am not scared of the dead.
I am envious of their peace.

You have chattering teeth that spill like oil hollographic on wet pavement
Lying between rows, saying that I miss you is not the same as

I am lonely (but don't know how to be alone)

And the ghost that resides between your bones was best suited with flesh
Far from that whose felt heaviest when it was close to yours

(Mine)

You have found the hole in the wall, the silk stained sheets drenched with sweat that poured from your skin when the words

Like and love

Were intertwined with once upon a time.
But you have hands grown cold like the drink you held between your palms when you realized that you didn't choose me along

I chose myself

You came to me in a dream once, with crystal covered mountains dripping with nostalgia.
Ice cream on your tongue tasted sweeter than you ever did. You apologized for that too.
I have carved a path from the ice to trek for days that felt heavier when there was no one to miss- no distraction from the shell that I have worn that has formed from the inside out.
I think I am softer, more tender, more loving than perhaps I actually am.
I am the rigid shell of a soul who is too scared to feel everything that should be felt and now I am left to wander in snowy banks with the boots you lent me that never fit.

You are the earth  I think
I have caught my fingers in your vines before.
like- a promise spoken in runes long ago.
"I will love you even when the sun sets-
my moon, you have found a space like opal
you will always gleam like a stone in the light.
You wander like a willow in the winter and I-
I don't think I have ever seen so beautiful a sight"

From forgotten parts of darkened forests, I have seen your eyes peering at the parts of my soul I have grown unaccustomed to showing.
Or maybe it’s the way your curtain falls after nights spent lingering in the shadows- wondering what’s best for the somber spirits you ****** with your cologne.
Your kisses lay like razor blades on skin that’s close to cold, moonbeams flickering on the edge of dreams that crawl between nightmares and terrors.
I have yet to let you in.

Have you found it
Because I know you've been searching through snowy tracks restlessly
Through empty valleys and moons of full
(I think you pricked your finger on a thorn)
I've seen your footprints
Heavy in the heel like you should know where you're going but can't remember
And you carry that weight past truck stops and treetops. Past rooftops, kissed with smoke
I've seen it
Covered in white fur coats of snow glistening
And I think you walk too quickly to catch it
So I'll sit here and wait until your bones feel warm once again
So maybe one day you can catch me too

How strange to
miss
a city.

Like saying:
I miss the way you were loved.
The way you felt busy and full
I miss your gloom your cold
your
sidewalks that felt
                           (foreign)
with
new boots to fill and new skies to kiss.

I miss you like a city.
I could navigate your walls
For
      ever

I want to be your reformation
So holy a scripture you forget damnation
I want to be the heaviest book you've ever read
In a tongue so thick your skin will shed

I am waiting for you.
Under the Full Moon clouded, and silent. I hear nothing but the summer night.
I, I have never met a storm that strikes as quietly as you- unsure of whether to leave with the breeze or hit like your eyes have been waiting and casting their gaze on me.
You tiptoe around the cracks and creaks and bends of my rivers and I wonder if there will be anything that is uprooted from your embrace.
Deadly is the night but I have seen her long before you arrived. I am worried that I will not feel the warmth of the rain in June.
The only rain I want to feel is you.

One day someone will make this body of mine bloom like a garden of wild roses.
I think I would pick each petal off and dry what remained.
My body is a desert but my roses don't need rain.

Today-
I feel special even though the sun has set the exact same way.
Maybe I am finally the the moon, or maybe it's just you.

I’ll let you see me. And I can shed a cloak like stardust if you promise the darkness won’t scare you away. I know it is frightening to see truth turn from white to midnight onyx in the span of half a day. I could be gentle too, and soft like morning skies. An alabaster shell you’ve polished well, a haven for saltwater tides. But I will fold and curl and settle along the veins wrapped in your skin. I’ll nest and breathe and home myself in pieces you’re terrified to miss. And when the sun rises and greets your dawning skin, I too shall find a path along your bones and leave before the light comes in.

I want your bones, rattling cold, every one of them.
For a second, you won't stop, not even as you reach my flesh and cascade like a snowfall
Too quiet to make a sound,
Over each pearl that kisses your skin.