in depth,
the moon settles,
behind a quiet black,
stretching like a sea beneath her,
and though she sleeps,
she casts so much sound.
freckled there in the sky
they tremble,
bursting flashes of white;
and hopeless below,
fingers trace,
eyes shutter closed,
while the crickets hum,
the trees rustle,
and the being of time
erases itself momentarily
Jun 18, 2019
Jun 18, 2019 at 4:07 AM UTC
Each binding catastrophe, enveloping us, like burning wood, like his hands,
Grooves filled with rock, with dirt, with my blood. The smell was dead.
And crescent, the imprints in my skin, like half moons. His nails dug into me like fire trying to die.
There was no meaning in the sky, it held no purpose, no barter to our senses. It was a pure blue. Untainted.
I felt so silently. He felt so eagerly; loud. I wondered if it was his mother or the dark that taught him to speak. Like sparks, reaching as arms into your body, and burning with electricity - his tone carried boulders, rumbling down your lungs to settle in the fear.
He scared me.
Yet.
I felt.
I felt.
The same as when i lay like unfinished art beneath him, or a ruined canvas; spilled paint, soaked edges. He looked at me like he did not know me. Or he did not know himself around me.
And when I said his name, it was a foreign word, an unknown language. I spoke in tongue. He spoke with his fist.
Sascha. Sascha.
I started to fall in love with the mix of black and blue, and how it shaded itself into purple galaxies, streaming down my arm like poured milk over fresh ink. These bruises were more than pain, they were his name, tattooed in cursive on my flesh.
Travesty knelt in the form of an opened grave. His eyes were closed. His skin was white. I placed my open palm onto the cold casket surface and I did not feel him, not at all.
May 28, 2019
May 28, 2019 at 4:17 PM UTC
anchorage alaska, 9:40 a.m
the mountains, 9:41
the dead trees, 9:42
the snow, 9:43
your face, woven into the scenery, 9:44
it is beginning to hollow,
the night, kindling it's daggers around the day,
and i tell you, so silent
as to not wake our voices yet,
"the train is coming."
you are on the boulders,
naked feet,
shoes lost in the shore
and you look at me and smile
and my eyes crease,
like thin wrinkles,
like wire, pulling them shut,
and i smile back.
i cannot think.
the train is approaching,
rumbling over the tracks
like a thunderstorm,
like an avalanche.
and you open your mouth to scream,
but it comes out a roar.
like accumulating rain
in the groove of a gutter,
you're there beside me
and we're both screaming.
and I can feel myself lurching
towards the rails
because at 9:55,
as the train passes us,
i look over
at the naked boulders
at the rising tide
at the burning tracks
and you're gone.
The night wrapped its skeletal arms
back around your ghostly form.
the rain had stopped,
the gutter was clean,
and everything
was a miserable empty
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 2:08 PM UTC
flown over myself, the shedding feathers from black birds that follow me;
my own fingers, pluck the ends from out of my skin,
as the sky shifts,
as the bristling of dead trees offer no shelter,
no warmth from their bony arms.
it's easy to follow silence
i keep her nestled in the hollow of my throat & while it swims into my lungs
all i can do is float
on the squeaking mattress,
against his cold, huge hands
holding me there,
cornered around vibrational gasps.
my body is corroding
my limbs are severed
the insides are flowing out of me
like rushing water.
like, the tub,
filling with pink.
Its shaking stomach rocking me against rusting porcelain.
They sleep among the dead.
I sleep in their duggen-up graves.
Apr 22, 2019
Apr 22, 2019 at 11:22 AM UTC
delicacy
your blooming self
smeared with
golden sun
accessorized with
dried dandies
wrapped around your wrist
i saw you
milk skin
back sinking into open earth
eyes open
searching
hoping
longing
and i turned then
face tucked inside my arm
and i spoke
mouth muttering whispers
and you,
you didn't speak,
not at all
you just laid there
like a ghost
Mar 4, 2019
Mar 4, 2019 at 1:27 AM UTC
the fragile morning seeps
her shadowing sunlight into my morning coffee cup, staining the walls of its home dark.
i sip on her effortlessly, her warmth a flowing melody against the chaotic prance of my pulse.
I close my eyes & let her wander.
Mar 2, 2019
Mar 2, 2019 at 10:15 AM UTC
I woke up and the rain had stopped
but my clothes were still wet
from sitting in the wash overnight.
I krept to the coffee machine with my robotic legs,
uncharged from the night before
and my body was heavy
my body was a stack of red bricks,
harpened together by a broken back.
I congealed there
on the damp grass, pressing warm blades into my skin
leaking wet into me
and it felt like blood,
it felt like misery hospital beds
a torn out needle
seeping out fragile red.
the coffee was stale,
bitter settled there in the back of my throat,
clinging on to starved muscle
I couldn't swallow
I wouldn't swallow
Your taste was still there somewhere,
nestled in my gums to relish in later.
come down from that burgundy tree
those branches won't hold you for much longer
the maple is dying,
heart rot and wounded.
your home is here,
your home is here.
I gather myself in two parts:
1 part body
1 part will
And you gather yourself from the other side:
1 part will
1 part hope.
I prayed for rain in the morning
but I only got the afterthought
I prayed for your flesh in my hands by night
but I only got your urn, cold and heavy.
Jan 20, 2019
Jan 20, 2019 at 2:42 PM UTC
the glass spice jar of rosemary sits in the corner,
bait to prying fingers and
warm dough rising.
a set of hands banish her from her home,
open her up to greedy senses
and hearty-moans.
and then suddenly,
her graceful throat tips,
grinds of rosemary fall into buttered flour,
and she settles around moles of dried cranberries,
specks of shimmering sea salt,
and passionate, cherry pink fingertips.
Jan 1, 2019
Jan 1, 2019 at 6:07 PM UTC
My mind could not conjure up the notion that the word, the name, meant something. A-n-n-a. I looked. I looked: she stared back the same. Unknowing, unfamiliar. I wanted to remember, I wanted to.
7 a.m, in the crawlspace underneath the house, flashlight grasped in my hand, sweat from my forehead plastering my hair against it. It smelled like dust. I inched forward on my stomach, writhing as a worm. My body seizing against dirt and webs. I yelled out her name. Just to see. Just to test if my mouth still knew how to speak.
Anna.
Anna.
There. In the corner. I flicked my light against a box with tape on the side and her name written on over it in marker. I whispered it to make sure. Anna. One more time. Anna. I sunk my face into the ground. My breath, soft from my lips but coarse in form, disrupt the filth, made me cough. I crawled over to her with ease, as if the bones in my body were pushing me, the muscles guiding me; these pulsing veins, telling me.
When I opened the box, the first thing I saw was her, smiling back at me in the form of a memory. July 1996, our wedding framed around sanded wood, with splinters etching at the sides, aching for a hold on them. And I cradled her, despite this. Despite my skin giving in.
Anna.
I almost forgot.
My head was hurting again. I blamed it on the suffocating of the casket underground enveloping me, not the staples buried into the skin of my skull, not the remembrance that underneath piles of dirt, her body was just a stack of old bones with only a stone to tag her as proof she was once living.
Anna. My Anna. I cradled the picture against my chest. I clung to her.
My light began to flicker, a spider crawled across my finger. Anna was diminishing, like a ghost, like a gentle sweep of navigating headlights turning a corner, creeping away, and suddenly gone.
Anna. A-n-n-a. I shut my eyes. I could finally remember.
Dec 31, 2018
Dec 31, 2018 at 5:04 PM UTC
shore born
black sand
bleeding colors of
a shaking sun, cascading in ripples against a
falling shadow of grey
like
her flapping hair in the wind
stained with age
and her
milk washed skin,
and her bare feet
bare self
uncowering to the rising tides.
Dec 29, 2018
Dec 29, 2018 at 7:23 PM UTC