it's a front-flip
got away

align out thinking we felt like this
envying teeth
the way your bottom lip curls
I curve at your corners
climb inside
someone give me shoulders to walk with
legs to speak
I'm tasting you from behind my eyelids
cause my mouth knows better

Kissed her here, kissed her there...
...Kissed that girl everywhere

Self proclaimed
Perfect perception
Pedantic hands
Mary Meticulous
Sally scrupulous
Insipid ideals

Foolish followings
Deep narcissism
Shallow words
Broken pedestal
Fake smile
Forced laugh

Misery's finest
Sentenced silence
Weak eyelids
Mind violence
Red iris
Scribbled papyrus

Fleeting joy

We gather them,

These stolen moments,
These orphaned seconds,
These lost dark minutes.

Stateless, Unattached,
These refugee clicks
With no form or voice
Do not belong here.

We pile them up,

These off cuts of time,
These shards of passing,
This swarf of tempo.

Shreds of interval
And dislocation
With no named event
To give them title.

And with our small words we bind them,
A suture in the wounded day,
To make a tiny poem of the scars.

I was a child
grown by the sea
I accumulated car minutes
and spent time between places
distracted by no other faces
than my own

Shifted to a slower tempo
I grew in the foothills
I accumulated long moments
walking from my office, home
I let the morning light wake me
& I
let you take me

You'd rest your hand in the small of my back
and you'd pull me in
and tangle yourself in my hair
we'd stay up all night and we didn't care
but we always made it to the sunrise
because it made the city look more honest
and we didn't know we were laying, happily,
in a twin bed of lies.