"I kissed a feminist once",
he says, face flushed blotchy, something heavy resting on his shoulders
maybe
“I kissed a feminist once,”
and everybody laughs
“she was cold as ice,” he says
and he doesn’t mention how I turned
warm beneath his fingers,
heated up like embers
and reduced his bed to flame and ashes
“God was she mean,” he says
but he hasn’t forgotten the time
I told him to be kind to himself, to
purge the poison from his veins and
scrape the smoke from his lungs
“I love you I love you I love you”
I said,
“please love yourself too”
“I kissed a feminist once,”
he says, to loud guffaws,
an elbow in his side
and he doesn’t say “her lips
were the softest thing to ever brush
my collar bone”
he doesn’t say “she made playlists in my mind”
or “she covered me like a blanket”
or “her teeth on my earlobe ripped me open and scattered me across the sheets of her twin bed”
he doesn’t say “I loved that
storm of a girl,
I loved her heavy at 4am I loved
her like pennies
at the bottom of a fountain
like memorized freckles
I loved her like depth perception
like opposable thumbs
I loved her I loved her I loved her”
and instead he shrugs
that heavy thing off his shoulders
and shrugs the feel of my lips
off his chest and he says,
“she was a crazy ***** anyway”
- Lily Cigale

it is in dove's ways how i love you

and it is no common sight
to take glory out of what this
life ever so defiles with its
uncouth hands.

in the way that i soar with my
unnameable wings over your
territories finding shade,
clinging with the wind, my mothered world in the eclipse of a day's turning - where together with the fleshly rivulets i am unafraid
to trample the night with lithe sound: a wing's flutter echoes
through the caves of your mouth deepening in primeval silence. stones woven earthly, intricate as a bed of mendaciloquence where truth lies stripped to the bone of the very voice of it. oh and what solace waits for me yonder hills that recognize my stretch - even the shadows rejoice in their fill of my passing elegies yet, no love
shall die! night arrives drowsily over these planes that seek me, and i cascade as gentle as a pond girdling your ample fish that i viscerally own, thriving inside me, whirling in graceful fire.

the morning takes me with you,
its duty speaks where i was once
sterile without path - you take mine flight and hover past everything, spreading garlands that would name all of them, ours!

You think love is a potion in a bottle.
It's a bullet in the barrel.

Why break your heart,
when you could break everything in the shadow of a cliff.

You think love is the thread of a tapestry.
It's a knot in the rope.

Why fall in love with perfection,
when you could just put a gun to your head?

it is  
raining again

remember when we were kids
we would stare outside the window
look for the pitter patter

we would leave foggy hand
prints on the glass
we would sing rain rain go away

teacher told us to.

clouds,
so discontent with thunder an-
d lightning.
always fighting
with each other
with anything
lots of yelling
lots of screaming

poor
grey clouds
cant hold the blue sky anymore.
down comes the rain,
sad clouds,
lots of rain.

thunder and lighting
get mad
boom
sky lights up with twenty million volts of resentment

that was a story
my mom told me when i was a little kid
who knew it was non-fiction

non-fiction to say the least
it was a reflection
a reflection of my parents
and why they don't love each other anymore

twenty million volts of resentment
on my
mothers
face
she says it was
an accident
it's fine

i am not a kid anymore
i know it isn't
fine
and
i dont sing
rain  rain        go
away

I
because you are never here to sing it with me
and

II
because i've learned that the rain has to pour before it doesn't,
so just
let it
*******
pour

its pouring all the time, and even when its not it still is
and you may not see it
and maybe no one can
but i see it
its constant.

i have
really grown to
love
the rain

He suffocates me as you
watch; callous and indifferent, he will
chew me up and spit me out.
I breathe tar into my lungs and call it
love; my spine turns into paste,
oozing through my pores and into his
mattress. And even if you could
scoop me up, I'd still be * pliable* -
putty in your hands.
You believe in saving, like I believe in
being saved, but I'm still just
treading water while you
swim. And my dawn hasn't scared away
my darkness. He's holding me under while I
thrash; My bones may turn into
pearls, but I wont develop
gills in time to breathe, and
there's a good chance I've been
dead for years already anyways. Let me
slip through your fingers like
sand or time, God knows I've never
been worth saving. Yesterday I was
beautiful, today I'm shooting stars, but
tomorrow I'll just be the
blood you can't seem to
wash from under your fingernails. I'm
unforgettable for no other reason than
you can't rinse my taste from your
mouth; I like to leave
scars - So save your energy for yourself and
let him take me; the truth is,
We deserve each other.