Sharpened silver and piercing the roads fan out
From a font of pin-pricking bursts of voice
Splashed outwards in broad tongued strokes
Of spectacle
Banal to only the blunt-minded
Dulled of consciousness.

With every misguided step across rain-slicked cobblestone
Ankles twisted in exhilaration of some unknown gust
Carrying ever northward.

Tender lapping, every particle clings to flesh
Capillaries spread and span the depths of concrete
Mortar and brick beating with the flurry of a wishful chest
Which begs for freedom
In full-throated undying song.

I don't know how to write you and maybe that's the point of it
I think about taxi cabs and single beds and pity my poor stomach
It can't take the shame of fogged memory
Dewed with whiskey and gingerale
Not regret, but it's kin, no fooling.
I don't do regrets
And I've never said a thing that I don't mean
So I meant it when I said it, but the when's important
Because I'm not flippant, or unsteady
But I don't know how I'm feeling.

Just know that I am.
I am feeling.
And I feel that that's significant.

Because I don't want to be a ball of quicksilver
Bright, mercury
Rolling from you in quick, sharp drips
Of poisonous charm.
Don't swallow it.
But do listen.
Just not too much.
Forget I said anything.
I'll stay quiet
Until I know what I'm saying.

Just know that I am feeling
Even if I don't know what I'm feeling.
I am feeling.

I wanted to give him a home
Though I didn't really know what that was.
He didn't feel safe
And I didn't feel safe
And it just seemed to make sense
For me to wrap around him
And shelter him with my hands
To bend backwards, twisting over him
To become walls and windows and fences
And to keep him safe within me
To become for him a home.

There were nights he would cry
And shake against me
And repeat that he could not measure up
To the house I'd built
To the home
And I hushed his cries
For his sake and mine.

I just wanted to give him a home.

There are two marionettes
Facing one another
Parts strung together
And dangling
Like mobiles over a crib.

The first has a head
And a neck
It has shoulders
Strung to fore-arms
Wrists and hands
It has the swell of hips and thighs
But only ever under fabric
It has a face
But no jaw
And only an upper lip
And no forehead.

The second marionette
Grotesque, and barely human
Has two small *******
Clinging to a sternum
Like sad droplets of water
A ribcage spanning
Like thin fingers
Across a chest
A bulbous young stomach
Hips and thighs unclothed, unappealing
Dappled flesh
Calves
Feet
Jaw
Forehead
Balanced precariously atop one another
Joined with a string.

When they step to one another
The marionettes mesh
Make a mess
And cannot escape one another
And move awkwardly
Haphazardly
Trying to conceal the Other
Trying to conceal the whole
Hoping only the string shows.

But the string is tangled
In the parts
Caught between the joints
Obscured by the puppet limbs.

Occasionally, a glimpse.

Did liking my status count
As communication for the day?
Because
I'll be honest
I'm counting how long it's been
Since I was sleeping beside you
And how long til I'll be there again
And filling the measured gap between
With instances of contact
Verbally
Between you and me.

I could die here
Already in my head
You've done all the worst things imaginable
I had us over and done with after the first date
Expecting the very worst
And I could die
And I'm not normally like this
But your lack of texts is holding me over a precipice
And I don't think I could fall any more if I tried.

It's not weird
It just means I like you
And I never like anyone.

I say I worry about her 120
Her 20/20
Her coming home in the evening, pouring a glass
And crying over the past twenty
Or so years
Gone quick as glass
Golden but weak.

She says she can't trust
That I won't get violent
And belligerent
Waking up in bus depots and shouting down phones
Alternating into coughing up whatever words available
To make her understand how much I hate
Everything.

And she gets it
She says
Sort of
The same way I get it
A little bit
I guess
But she worries about my drinking
And I worry about her drinking
And we don't know where he is
Or who he's with.

I can't lie on my back because my *** gets in the way
Forcing my spine into a painful arch
A bridge that won't fall

I can lie on my front because my ******* are too small
But that's no real comfort either

When I run up or down stairs my whole everything ripples
Like the flesh could at any minute just spring off
Imagine, a skeleton on the steps
Ha ha

And that's great about such and such and so and so
And what they're eating or not eating and how they've gotten their busts to grow
And their waists to shrink
But that doesn't make a **** bit of difference
To the skeleton on the steps
Encased in all this flesh.
Thanks for the reminder, though.