Touching forearms can cause a rash.
At least, it did. Whatever occurred, allergy.
Tanto faz, já aconteceu lá atrás.
Mas o lembrar - ô pra lembrar

May such thoughts exist only in passing,
amanhecendo pra acabar aqui assim
Recordings and so much distance make
a vibrant view. Sinto falta da minha cidade.

Let it be an itch on my forearms.
Allow me to feel touch, to both see and experience
beauty however it so permits.
Não dá pra experimentar tanto assim.

Redemption is not supposed to come as we’d like.
Tô permitido pra fazer isso no outro idioma?
Lembro da coceira e I wish you to be the pain
in my kneecaps.

Critique is a dear friend

beginning of an itch,
a compulsion to recall
wallowing in reminiscence
it flows in one eye
and out the other

hesitant to attach names
but willing to start
for the sake of a source caring enough
to warrant breaching a feigned barrier

the detachment atomizes
so decided against
as it was with a left palm in the sun
with a wallflower valentine
and a song sung at night

I feel the care - I really do
How it feels as growing pains
To grace myself with a belief
One that I so quickly apostatisize
Savor the reverence of it all
Color negatives of care,
visible only for a moment - up to the light.

It’s in the phantoms of your arms -
the path and the smoke you leave behind
just outside my focal length
that fund the false peace I tended to

My legs can’t replicate the steps
the adrenaline is still there,
dancing closely as to syncopate a pulse
just to melt the wax and feel warmth
imagining that something would change.

How cruel your compassion became
how damning your gentle touch
completely enrapturing me in memory
looks like we’re both trying to quit something

Bathing in surface tension,
streams of skin left flush in slumber.
Perhaps it’s like being a bird,
trading fragility for flight
and something to fly for

Saddening yet is the absence
that by pulse alone cannot be warranted
for what? By what bounds?
Fingernails and fabrics,
clothing and crossroads,
songs and ***,
that are so wonderful and so
well pieced together. Okay.

Swords and wristwatches -
how dissonant and foolish
- or as it convinces so.
Of which a passing kindness sows
what will reap a morose kind of harvest

Saddening yet again is the absence,
that is because it cannot be the lack that
is forbidden by design.
It is the sadness as taboo
as waiting for you to show up

Within each and every breath
wisps of it all drench alleles
swiftly, surgically.

Every photon, widening iris
consuming every angle
insatiable and unrepentant

Not anything but desire
coating a soul in what
a matte finish?

Fingertips around a waist,
leaning with closed eyes,
breath upon cold ears

Just another beat
another beat
another beat

Chanting so violently
it cannot be craved any more
any more than one can be loved

It percolates through these lungs when breathing in
Never to be that way, oh my god
never to be

All those little bits of oxygen entering the bloodstream
yearning for that sacred resting of the ear
the joy is felt at a distance

Pass through the chambers and fuel the body
eyes and smiles and more eyes again
an inverse person, a void - cannot reach out

Energy to the tendons, the muscles, all of it
new pulse allows the outstretching of hands
never to be that way, oh my god

an inverse person, a void - trying to reach out
let the hand suspend itself, let it galvanize,
let it rust; rust. Never to be

In the eyes they do notice,
in the hand there are quarters,
in the room there is silence,
in the memory there is little.

Chatting and
dancing and
***** and
water and
and
and

Sunlight and
bite marks and
nausea and
oh no and
and
and

In the eyes they did notice,
in the hand there were quarters,
in the room now there is nothing,
and as a memory we'll be.

As if it could touch a deity,
a feeling embodied in the fingertips of Adam, it could.
A reach into the rumors amongst passers-by,
lifetimes woven into alleyways, backpacks.

Is it not enough to love vibrantly, like a window in daylight?
To not only be seen, but to be seen through -
reflecting back blurred gestures and nervous habits.
Translating the apparition into sighs and enamor.

The core - the eigendecomposition - speaks confidently.
Hiding in each each verbal pillar the tiniest wound.
Down in the space below, the basis for it -
that feeling embodied in the fingertips of Adam.
Reaching as such towards rapture of the deep,
hoping in each joint to love so deeply,
it was as if it could touch a deity.

It's not much different than a torn seam,
you pull hard enough and the thread comes out.
But no point in nurturing a tear that can't be found,
it's just nice to imagine these stitches have a purpose.
Or that injury doesn't beget an added insult.
It can just be injury.
Either way I can't get you out of my seams.

Parts of me still feel like I'm idolizing you somehow,
ironing you onto whatever memories look nice with jewelry.
The rest of me knows it for sure. Worn with verbiage,
I'm happy to never speak of it with you again. I really meant that.
Silence is a close friend of mine despite how infrequently it visits, but secrecy and I have always been closer.

My needlepoint feels impossibly delicate when I can see your curls at approximately 55 miles per hour. My hands unravel away fast enough that I couldn't hem it anyway.
Pastel blue eyes in the sun, and a tapestry of tattoos fill my vision. Your nails dyed carefully and applied to you like buttons. The outfit looks great by the way. I am so nervous in front of you. I always have been.

I appreciate your understanding and your embroidery of it, easing the bits of it all I still hold onto. I've never been much of a seamster but I've mended a few things in my time. Eventually I'll be clinical enough to clip the threads left over. Maybe I'll even be able to pull them out. For now I've tailored myself to fit into a role I'm happy to fill, but the threads keep ******* breaking.

My mother once told me it was underground
Grimacing just under the pavement
As if to smile its way into the sun
Teeth of dropped gum and bullets

Laughter and light do not show me this
In naïveté I doubt her judgement
To smile back at the sidewalk and roads
Just to step on the cracking pavement

My poor mother

Give it concrete just to crumble
Fill it with metal aching to bend
Tireless and careless steps in any order
Cover it in paint and sand it off

Pull apart each atom
Build each city with closed eyes
Take out a hard drive without ejecting it
Print over the paper again

Break it again
Do it again
Hit whatever it is
Destroy it for fun
Creation and chaos are lovers
Bound not by rings but by anvils

I hear them coming up the stairs
I’d say it’s late for them because it’s late for me
Mornings greet him and I the same
Promptly

And the daytime greets her too
Frequently a surprise to her and I both
I think they must have had a wonderful wedding

Laying in the hallway to avoid my bed frame
All four legs come up the wooden walkway
You both laugh so kindly with one another
I’ve been looking for music lately
How kind for you to play it at my door

I want it to be a bellowing impact
When I think of it
Repeat and repeat and repeat
A madman I’ve made of myself
Repeat and repeat and repeat

How reduced I feel in this
Barely able to claw myself out
Just for an inkling of perspective
For what?

Hot breath and lungs used liberally?
Hands weak from a grasp unaware?
These moments of affection,
existing isolated in gossamer
drive me up the wall.

Claws that sear like roots
Into my skin like,
something. I’m not sure.

Sometimes when I shiver,
it feels gentle.
A deep breath in cold air.
Exhale into warm arms.

Easy to miss it - the laughter.
Embraces of a friend.
That cannot be all the way out here.
Where all I know is the rain.

in small clawed hands, i imagine
lie a responsibility so foul it can hardly be spoken of
spawn of maxwell and joke of the white coats
or was it the stargazers? doesn't matter.
can't stand the ******

how many speeding atoms has it let slip?
sitting upon the throne bestowed to itself
maybe holding a cute pitchfork. attempted appeal
it killed everybody and everything and keeps going
its a hard job to do i get it but still a bad move

its a shame they made sense of you
that little negative sign could bring back my family
some friends too but the Little Demon wasn't dumb
it became a lawyer and diffused it all away
they say thinking generates entropy

I can feel myself fade away in a cycle.
Thin skin never did suit me well.
Each day broken up into tiny manageable parts.
Built to be a curated filter my personality must fall through.

This is not repair, but maintenance.
An entropic form that must dilute to remain safe.
I am a capillary of my years, resentful of oxygen.
No pulse can sift through me now.
I'm alone in this vena of an apartment.

Certainly there is no breaking of barriers here.
A refusal to spill blood for the wait makes this almost
pleasant.

Such a beautiful sound,
for the birds to cry out at.
It's been awhile since they last painted for me.
Spreading wings like brushstrokes that dot the clouds as if they were born to percolate through them.

Plant

I love my new furniture. I'd always been too worried about spending too much. I can really stretch my legs in-between these walls. My family thinks I chose wisely.
My house is missing the western sunset, and I can only seem to get so much sun. The rain here isn't the same.

Plant

Crimson. It's always the beginning of the song. It sings itself in my head when I drive. Sometimes I sing along if nobody is in earshot. My youth wonders if the trees will hear me if my wheel slips when nobody is around. The sound would be so loud, I imagine.

Plant

Maybe it's the feathers floating down, or the pavement brushstrokes. The sounds are so pretty out here, where I'm no longer in earshot. Am I too far into the echo to come back?

It's my youth
what have I done
to see all this choir
fall through the sand

It's the lens,
the color flips
neon aquamarine
what have I done

It's a call from the root.
Accuse and stave rot
do you remember me?
what have I done

a constellation a day
becoming an adult
what have I done

It is not with the palm of my hand,
nor the skin pressed against it.
I crumble under the worry that is the bones -
it’s the bones that cannot stand the weight.

The crackle of an old tape makes for a clear memory,
a boy I haven't seen in a long time. He looks like me.
There is a terrible irony to see his thoughts through a screen,
hoping that there is some way to remember so hard that he hears me.

Rounding a corner - he walks in with a ghost, and the other causes the camera to crackle once more. They are all smiling. Still the remembering  must get harder, but it still doesn't work. He doesn't know they're ghosts.

The camera, the ghosts and the boy wander around a strange place, and they care for him greatly. He's too small to understand that they are ghosts because the memories are too strong a pillar to topple. He does not know he's alone in the hotel room. That will scare him.

He does not know he's alone,  no matter how hard I remember. The ghosts love him so dearly and he does not know. His bliss is not ignorance but youth. My remembrance can make him alone, but it cannot make him old. I did that.

My remembrance cannot change the ghosts, but he can see them from above the clouds.

The ungodly sounds from my mouth,
are wisps of a talk better had when you were alive.
My coiled body knotted so strongly together,
is the same strength I would have held you in before you left.

The memories my mind play are not recent, but from long ago.
Like a movie they shuffle quickly before my eyes.
Easter mornings and Christmas puzzles, singing songs, and apple pies.
Leaving with you is a part of me.
I'll miss you forever I swear solemnly.

The way you loved us is the way you lived.
Leaving an eternal lesson imparted on us all,
to each it may be different, but to each it will always be true.
I cannot bear to see you go, but you knew that I love you.

The truth is that I should've called you, and I never should have settled for a voicemail. Ever.

It is these embers that I feel spite
Borne of the fire fuel’d by due diligence
Oftentimes float past my skin
Glimmer with whimsy as they do not touch
Yet when they do I am tempted to dive
I want you to be unhappy
For what love you withheld;
I want you to change back
For you aren’t what I loved;
There are no others.

These pass as a sting to my flesh but a moment
Heat remains only as an afterthought
I will recall purple skies and shoulder teardrops.
I will recall pianos and construction sites.
My spite is human - but its passing is humane.

They are so few and so fleeting
Wispy ghosts of a feeling
Made into powerful poltergeist
Emboldened into something nice

Rarely do they come to breathe
From the suffocating coffin sea
Of all the hopes making pleas
Crying out to care for me

Mistimings grand and misdoings few
Such a simple want to care for you

Soft lips
Speak truths so small
In the moment I slip
You drift away
Away from it all

Hyperdense and ‘empty’ we are to be
yet since the beginning, you’ve pulled on me.
Little waves of gravity whispering,
sweet signals on a horizon as comforting

Your silhouette cast only by the death of stars
So rarely I see you through these cosmic wars
Trillions between us counting down to the last
The bright music of time plays as the novae all blast.

I’ll devour a galaxy, a cluster, a quark
Just to be near you in what’s left of the dark
Tear one another apart in a giant display
When we touch and give all of our light away

The blame does not rest on me.
For the blame does not rest.
It lies no place on this ground.
So how am I to shift it?

I am truthful in my indifference.
Yet disdainful of the truth.
I suffer in the cold of what could be,
then blanket myself with the blame.

There is a rot at my center and I refuse to name it.
There is a blossom in my core and I yearn to save it.

Brush by the cityscape in the small hours.
Where passers by cannot see me observe it.
My lights are its decoration; the silence ours.

The visions past the water age differently.
It was there when I was born.
It will persist when I pass on silently.

Pleasantries are exchanged twixt those among it.
Such pleasantries are just that, for something so seemingly immortal.
It too shall pass on as I will one day.

Beauty is just beheld in what it has seen of me in such constancy.

I have had good love
I want you to know as well
Good, with sabotage

I tear at my body for sake of vanity
However ironic, like you said to me.

I can see the ease it gave to you now.
When your thoughts were all convening.

For if this body is different enough,
the old one won't have meaning.

Such things happen;
among a pile of bones.
Every skeleton unique
and hidden from eyes.
Yet with pieces constant
the puzzle changes.
So many skeletons,
so many bones.
Skulls pressed together,
but will the rest stay alone?

If you're already here in the future
Perhaps I shall be
As already I've been in daydreams
However childish they are

I have unclaimed my arms
History grasps at my back
Still it slows me
But I can enjoy the thoughts

Perhaps this tower will
Such towering height
Such fascinating tone
I make no assumptions
But I enjoy the daydreams

I taste attachment like an entree
Savor touch like a drink
Feeling stuck in these feelings
Despite my landlock I sink.

I get lost in the hair
I get lost in the jokes
I get lost in the idea
I get lost and I choke
I yearn for potential
I bend towards care
I want to hold someone
But nobody's there

I cannot help but see patterns.
As the couple begins their first sway.
Such beauty comes from the music.
That I learned all from you back one day.

It happens in movies, books, clouds, and conversation.
There's no place to escape it, no district, street, county, or nation.
Whenever it happens, whether I'm frustrated, bored, happy, or blue,
I can't figure out what to say to you.

Still I keep fading away
Is this what it's like to die?
If I end and nobody is around to care,
was I ever loved?

I can feel you secede when I talk of my worries
Perhaps I am not made to have problems.
Perhaps I'm better off being such a problem.
A problem better left silent.

I want nothing more than a cycle.
To come back to land that once grew fertile.
& begin to tend to it with the same care.
Lest I do not starve first.

Confessions unseen
I'm swaying past the windmills
To be beside you