“I just wanted it to be Natural” she said.
The morning I stabbed my face
with an electric toothbrush.

Cheese fries and football
I sat giggling over tequila,
wondering why my heart
felt so at home

walking down empty hallways
echoing with murmurs and
waterfalls. Crammed onto
subway cars, and running fingers
over octopi and battle scars.

The words used to fall
out of my mouth like
teeth in a dream.
But they all stopped

until you.

Now they are pouring out
like a faucet.
And I haven't enough
buckets to catch them.

We rode home
One rubber wheel after another
Drenched to the liver in rain and alcohol.

"Right family, wrong housemate"
I said as your calloused finger
Ran long the sharp edge of my shivering jaw.

Your hands, rough, from digging holes
And coming home at 5 am
With ****** and swollen knuckles

Are the hands, that wash my hair
And hold mine, step in step
And lift me onto kitchen counters

So that our lips can greet and meet
And pull apart, only to reunite
Like us lovers, who long to never be too

Far away from one another.
One block and half, around the corner
or one street and two buildings away

We are never too far apart.
"I'm never going to die"
which is why I only called the hospital and the jail

that night you went missing for twelve hours
And left the morgue out of it.
If you're never going to die

Then I am determined to live forever
So that I can wake up everyday
To the way you look at me

Even though I hate Ska music.

All I wanted was to warm you,
rub your skin raw until you felt
the fevered blaze you've ignited
underneath mine, like ironing
out wrinkled flesh. I wanted
to restart your pilot light.
Watch the glowing embers
fall, like ashes from the cherry
of your cigarette, as the kindling
surges and cracks from the fricton
of flint and steel. I wanted you
to smolder, and smoke, and blaze
like the wild fires of the Serengeti.
I wanted to destroy you,
a  beautiful brilliant  bonfire.
Singing away pieces of you.
The tip of the incense.
The edges of of the coal.
The pieces that stop you from glowing,
radiating your brilliance.
I wanted to burn away the parts
of you that douse your  intensity.
The charred black wood.
I wanted to burn away the parts
of you that are cindered.

I was bleeding into a porcelain
cup watching each drip, drop and fall
rippling into the pool, drowing
my ex lovers in apathy. I could see
their faces in the tiny waves
as they washed and broke against its sides.

My knuckles cracked like nail polish,
skin chipping away and regenerating
like an over-juiced lemon.
Damp pulp and disfigured rind,
bitter and dried up
wrapped around the china.

I placed it to my lips staining them
like liquid roses in a glass,
mixed with mascara and salt water.  
Scorching my throat like breathing in
burnt paper and singed tobacco
as the steam rose up like
heat from the pavement in june.

Her memories are riddled with holes
from maggots gnawing away
at her already decomposing mind.
Rotting away inside her skull
like teeth soaking in sugar water
and Methamphetamine.

She has a basement filled with flutes
overflowing with year old concoctions
made of emotions and the echoes
of the harpy she once was.
They drip down the sides and pool,
coagulating on the floor like puddles
of dried blood.

Tattered and torn négligées and teddies
are strewn about the bedroom, stained
from the days of lulling men to their deaths,
like a siren on the rocks,
and writing the contract of her own demise
by drowning herself with them.

The lipstick is off.
The eyes of Medusa are closed.
There is no web left to spin.

And as her heart passes back into the abyss
it takes what pieces are left of of it,
an eddy of tiny mirror shards
reflecting the faces of those who once
shown into it and have now faded,
remnants, of its once glorious mosaic.

I want to wrap
my arms around you
and squeeze.
I want to squeeze
and shake you
and peel off
the layers.
I want to shake you
until it all falls off:
the lonely
the morose
the meaningless.
I want you to take it all off.
I want to see you.
I want to see you naked.

It’s time to put the periods
at the ends of the sentences.
To finish the chapters
and move unto the next.
It is time to end the stories
of unrequited love
and heartbreak.
It’s time to stop
rereading – writing
the same sad tales
over and over until
our eyes are sore,
the traction gone
from our soles.
Backsliding until
our hands and knees are ******.
The sleepless nights
too long streaked
with mascara filled streams.
The days of dreaming
and building monuments
to love like castles in the sand.
It’s time to slow down,
breathe, and let the butterflies
pour out from our mouths.