we sit

moon in transition
dancing off glassed ripples
filled with breath; bread

he pulls me to him

live in vulnerable nakedness;
cherry orchards spraying fire
into his sky

hold me tight; tighter

silence screams.  melodies.
unspoken words hang heavy
while demons dance within

can’t you see i’m looking for you?

close; closer
the mangos have fallen;
(consumed by the spring)
to rework our truth

we should just sleep together

night falls; darker in questions.
silence laps an metaphorical shores
where together our bodies should lay

you should go before it’s too late

tears glisten, manifest.  the loss
of not knowing your skeletons
hanging from my trees

and i silently scream
wait for me;
it is not here
that you will find me.
but not here
i whisper
is better
than nowhere.

someone once asked me
“how will i haunt you when
you’re in the arms of others?”
and i couldn’t reply
as his words were blazed
across the crimson landscape
of my soul
and now i hear those same whispers
coming from a place that
he could never touch
as he faded
into nothingness,
almost forgotten
except for a few words scribbled
into the backs of dead trees,
an occasional thought,
glance,
i can now answer him
and say,
“you won’t”

silent verse
an impossible darkness

silenced white horses


a heartbeat inconceivably there

in fallow ground

riddled with scars, memory.


asphyxia : rivers

knowing what lies across those distant shores

the current



that carries within it

a new voice

shadowed in promises
 


shadows of

deepened longing,
a hunger



that is not hunger but 

an echo; knowledge gained from

other echoes that
 


resound within

these walls that do not

refuse to contain
 


the violent

utterances, sharp points against

the details of
 


their bodies that carve

words into words,

aching with the residual
 


sounds of

a shared silence-

their bodies save
 


all that has been lost

to the tidal

pulls; a tangential force
 


that finds the center of

all that is sacred

all that hinges at the margin

desires caught between

breath and

a moment; ecstatic --
 


the desert air

bears witness to

our separateness and how
 


that chasm

and this surface

mend scars


to amend our

separate sins; faults which

no longer
 


exist in this time

and no longer

hold us how they use to

the mango has
released its hold
made its descent
to soft ground below

but not so soft
to sustain its wholeness

multi-hued skin
split;
golden promise,
exsanguinated,
saturating what lies beneath

stripped bones puncture
what could have been
and what remains

is just that

lying only works
if you believe
the words
yourself.

the absence of you,
negative space,
gaping;  looming;
voids your presence once filled.

where does fault lie?
in our separate assumptions?
desires shared for different reasons?
a phone call balanced on a precipice?

and if i write these words,
give them to you...
“you won’t”
“i don’t”
does it make them true?

or am i self-destructive,
knowing that,
as i hand them to you,
even i don’t believe them?

but will you?

anger in these words.
yes.
hurt?  absolutely.
and fear.

but truth?

truth is what we have been
what we are
what we are becoming.

but it is not these words.

and that makes me the liar.

your breathing,
motions in darkness
at the stillest hour
deepens me,
then suffocates.

and i fall

into places where time
stretches for infinity,
touches down at never
then desperately grasps
for always.

i close my eyes,
lying somewhere in-between
where all my absolutes
suddenly become uncertainties.

the edges are blurred
as darkness dissolves corners,
melts them in their blessed finitude
of inked desert nights
and ribboned highways.

but highways end as well,
not in great thunders
but quiet trickles,
whispers
of beds we’ve shared
in that haze between
reality; dreams.

after hours of coltrane
on nights of laughter,
nights of tears,
nights of endless *******
and surrender

where whispers dance in fantasy
fading into a reality
of one truth,
your truth,
ours,
arms and lips,
searching hands and sweat-soaked bodies,
wandering eyes,
dripping words.

and the scent of our balancing flesh is my only salvation.

i’m hard in all the ways
the world tells me
a girl should be soft
and soft in all the ways
that don’t matter to anyone else

i am not made for this world