A moment busily constrained
By the threads of its own making
A flicker and a flourish embellish the skin
The aetherwick has been lit
And the chemical lights sleep upon us
Once again leading those wavering
Into a stupor divine

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

A small wavelength swells on the night sky.
Forming a faint droplet before smoothly departing.
I feel the cold next to my left eye and I close it out of habit.
Blinding, I keep it closed;
I can discern the crack of their impact on the pavement.
Evaporating away, letter by letter. Thought by thought.
It is different, but it is the same.
All these memories becoming part of the same air in my lungs.
Friendships that were once stars.
Falling to the earth as the light secedes from my eyes.
It is being alone, that will blind me.
Am I becoming him?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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'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.

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

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.