Fingers
Wrap around my waist
One hand curled in over my back
Your headrest isn't solid board and creaky springs
I'd laugh but it would fall flat as
Against the curve of knees over knees and face to shoulder blades
I cushion you. Curled into me more than around me and
We look silly because I'm so much smaller than you

She opens her mouth and sap pours out.
They speak about their desires. Someone who won't leave after two weeks. Someone who won't break away.
I'd laugh but it would fall flat as
I'm the one who leaves after a day.
Isn't that the worst? No. I can think of so much worse. Then they speak about me. "You better hold onto her" and "she's good people" or "don't they look adorable?" then "he stole my cuddle buddy"
Then they kiss.

I try not to move, much.
I'm the reason they stayed.
But the man behind me is better behaved. And he doesn't want me for more than my warmth. And he's never slept the night here, not unless I put him there. So I stay. And I listen to the two on the floor. And feel the crick in my neck start to get sore.

Legs
Wrap around my thighs
One foot atop mine
Your breath isn't evened by force
When I turn to you I want to cry
but it's a thought away from falling asleep
So I fall asleep with you.

I am my father's daughter.
I'm a dreamer, and a fighter.
My morals are few and thin,
And I've never quite fit in.

I am my mother's daughter.
But less so than my father's.
And oh what a sin it is.
That she hoped I'd be hers, more than his.

He met me at the Pacific Ocean that night.

      I was trying to keep a candle lit against the wind, cupping my hand around it. As it sputtered and bent, I thought about December. About snow piling up on the driveway, banks folding over themselves in the fields. The river would be frozen over. The pipes would freeze, rickety houses huddled against the cold. I shivered, moving my hand closer to the wick, bowed over it like I kept the holy flame itself. I regretted not bringing a coat, knowing the spray and chill would numb me as ever. As it did when I’d take myself out into the black, walking into the ocean dark as an abyss. Waiting for its tide to swallow me and floating, sometimes in jeans, sometimes in a dress, seldom in bathing attire. Throwing aside the weight of the world, and I miss those endless moments spent wading out alone. The candle almost went out, and my heart remembered to forget a beat.

     I couldn’t hear him as he walked. The sand muffled his bare feet. Weathered, calloused feet, tired from stress and work. Not like his hands. Despite the heavy lifting, despite below freezing temperatures, despite nicks and scrapes and a rough life, his hands were always soft. Gentle as he’d pet the coat of his dog. Careful as he’d hold a bottle of wine, or hold me. As perfect as the silt constantly smoothed by the salty sea, which ebbed and swept in my ears.

     When he was close enough, he stood before me, blocking out the moon. I never looked up. Eyes dancing in the fire, daring myself to cry and **** it early. I felt the warmth off him like a hot spring pool at Yellowstone. The overwhelming sense of safety, of relief, overridden by fear.

     The light had to go out. I told him, that by all accounts, he was late. Ever late. 9, we’d said. I wished he would say sorry. I wished he’d take my hands and put his forehead to mine. Oh, but he wouldn’t say or do anything. Perhaps he was sad, in those last moments. While I thought about summer, careless laughter and harmless dares and then, then I did let the tears flow. Maybe if I’d looked at his face, maybe then I would have seen in his eyes. The reason. Always the reason.

     I was trying to turn into a shadow against the moonlight, pulling my knees to my chest. As he took the candle from me. As he blew it out, I thought, but I never looked. I could hear his footsteps, then, plodding away from me. Loud in my head, quiet acceptance in my heart. As I sniffled and coughed, I thought about spring. I took my thoughts away, somewhere new. Where flowers were starting to bud, where a newborn bird hopped around my feet. I thought about wine, and plane tickets, and Christmases that would never come. About lights, and time, and faulty wiring.

          It would never have survived.

"I'm just a call or text away," he says
I don't love him much, he's gentle
Unassuming, lackadaisical in our conversations
He'll reply when he wants, it's on my schedule
His presence on my phone won't consume me,
And I care, where he's going, what he studies, where he works
I know his favorite movies, I guess, his favorite parks, his number

I wish it could stay this way, always.
The part where you just meet somebody whose addition to your life though subtle, is duly noted.
You'll notice if they're not there for a week,
but you don't need constant reminders
Before they start wanting more, or replace you
Before I want more, or drift away
Before "I'm only a call or text away" becomes a relic of the past

You were the best blanket
Now my coffee's my radiator and lover, both
I don't care to fix my shirt as it falls off my shoulder,
And sunlight bleeds over the bay
Paint splashes across the flowers in the windowbox,
Teenagers ride their bikes across the lane
Boats set off from the docks
Everything is just the same as when you left
I singed my hair with a lighter and took your picture from the wall
But you're still full of empty promises,
And I'm still sitting here, sipping coffee, waiting for you,
So nothing's really changed at all.

(at least the *** is new)

Let me tell you about Puerto Vallarta.
How cool air comes in over the ocean,
and how even in the rain the boardwalk
is beautiful and serene.
Let me tell you about sipping a sangria
in old town and the bouncing bridge
and the old fountain in the square.
Let me tell you about the new club
they opened in the basement across the street
and the top floor suite where I lay
with a man for the first time.

Let me tell you about Mexico.
The way the poolside music wakes me at 11
Let me tell you about El Panorama,
watching fireworks from the pirate ship below
Lighting up the bay as I dig into the
best steak, best views, best service
Let me tell you about Quimixto, Las Caletas
Days spent dancing on boats, and scuba diving
The same waters we fish and surf on
One with nature and the city

Man, I miss this and Gerry,
Four years to the day we met I'll be there
Telling the ocean about you, just for one day.
But you may never see these things you missed,
Your bare feet are no longer welcome upon the sand

Let me tell you....

*Let me tell you of
Taking my two best girlfriends there,
From the market to the marina,
And the flowers the men would give us-

And in another week that'll be me again,
Older but still free, soaking up the sun,
Flirting and dancing and swimming
Just my 23rd year down in PV,
And my story goes on

Covergirl
Pick me up and use me
Tape me above your headboard
With ice cream smudges and tequila stains
Covergirl
Hide me in the mattress
Say you only have this
Articles and ads
C’mon what else is it there for?
Covergirl!
You say you’ll always want me!
I’m last month’s issue already
As nothing but a side story
Your Covergirl’s pin up shorts and do’s
are so 2002!
Having me is a teen’s first regret!
The one and only,
Idolized phony
Genuine Covergirl?

Tickle me pink and,
Paint me in orange, I
Want warm colors,
While I laugh out the storm I,
Want to roll down green hills,
And bathe in brown dust and,
Cry neon-yellow, if I want to,
Well I will, just

Let's swim in the blue,
And stare up at the grey,
Watercolor the town red,
For another purple day.

.Heat.
Must hold on,
Closer, until, meld ontop of-
Body against, heat of body,
Holding on, to someone,
Someone I love- like a ladybug,
Like a lizard, so cold, just want,
Body heat. Just need reptilian comfort,
Drunk, cuddled, human to human,
Hold me. One sec more. One more minute-
Such strong arms-
Wrap around me, I drape across you
You don't mind? Do you?
Only us, no other, no one else in all
In all the city, the country, provence, world
Just us. So just. Please
please.
Remember it was just us, once.
And you, you couldn't tear yourself away from me and I
I tried to slip away but now I
I can't move away for all the
Motivation in the world
warm
Let me be a lizard
Let me be dependant upon your warmth
.Let me..

I woke in the night air,
Damp from the grass, stale breath and smoggy eyed
You played with my hair as it turned from green to blue and back
And I held your paper skin in my palm, as familiar as a lighter
The air smelled of weeks ago, of dust
I had to leave in my tracks, violets grew where I stepped away
You curled into them and I wished you a rainstorm
Recovering my jacket from where we'd tossed it,
And your favorite necklace
When the veil lifts again, you'll think you might have lost it
I'm a walking dream, crisscrossing lines of red from every toy
I discard in the real world,
It's miles to the Ocean
Counting every block
I am noiseless and vapid, listless, light
You may be waking up tonight,
Wondering where your blanket went,
Wondering who left the kiss marks on your hips
This is all I leave you, the aggravating half-memories
A trilling laugh, a groan, a caress
As the waves guide me out
And the lights lead me down
I am home in the silt beneath your feet,
And my disregard as deep.

California. Land of the In-And-Out, the glitz, the glamour. The noise of traffic to burst the bees out of her hive mind. Okay, so In-And-Out wasn't as good as Biggerton's Burgers. That **** was endorphic, but at least anything was better than nothing.
At least, unlike South Dakota, there didn't seem to be any Llama farms around. She could live with that. It was actually pretty nice in LA. Noisy, hot, next to water. Her pyrite keychain (swiped) dangled from her keys as she turned off the Mustang (swiped, but undeniably hers) and pocketed them. Run-down Motels never went out of season. It would be treason against nature for them to. ******, broken-spring beds and tepid showers, loads better than her backseat though.
It would be easy to take in the habit of throwing trash around her car, she mutters. Half remembering all her garbage dump trips (neighborhood yards and fast food restaurant bathrooms taking the brunt of it). Agent Runaway laughs as she stretches her arms above her head.
There's a base in San Jose. Screaming, electric shocks, experiments. Like her. Just not... successful. With a mad woman on the loose, they've cut back spending. Put it all on her. And what a gamble that was, she hummed. But there were plenty of off-radar, illegal, operating sublets. She'd need one to solder her pretty little mind back together.
Agent Runaway stifled a yawn and clawed her way into her motel room, barely kicking the door shut and collapsing on the bed. In minutes she'd shut down all her sensors, stop listening to the babble of the old woman who'd handed her her keycard at the desk and the squabbling couple next door. She was asleep.

I lay on stained mattresses amidst oil paintings and mirrors
Lattice veils of mascara run down my pallor cheeks
As I stare down at the blood pooling in my outstretched hand
Reflections stare down at me, winged ******* and soldiers
All eyes across the room staring down with me, to the checkered floor
My pale pink toes brush the tile, the soles black smudging the gloss
White, blaring, chandeliers above, candelabras with jeweled adornments
Gracefully falling downwards like tears, my own indenting upon satin sheets
Wrapped tight around my legs, falling loose around my shoulders
Caping me, hanging open at my ******* bruised and swollen
Though I've no babe, and so, I clench my eyes against the staring
Chiding me, beguiling me, burned in behind my eyelids there,
you. are.
Whispering like chiffon, along with the fabric of my dress beneath your manicured fingernails
Tracing the edges of my gooseflesh and regaling me with tales of woe
and wonder, of the conquests of art, fine frames and fantastic auctions
Our freedom, held capricious on the winds of chance, before
Now love, our love, your love, provided such an opportunity, a chance to fly away
This you mumbled to my neck with adoring kisses
as relieving as fresh rain against my skin, hands tuning the zipper along my back to play such a fine melody like a phonograph
A pretty thing, to be molded by such hands, with as much regard as handling a Monet painting

I see it clearly after all

When you left them, they all gathered
On a moonlit night,
Their hearts as candles to the vigil
And their mothers swooned, when they heard the news,
And their daughters sang a rock-n-roll Hallelujah.

Your words came back to them,

And the salt from the tears wept over your star,
All the glitter swept up from the wind,
Though the flowers have all dried out,
The streets you walked will never be the same.
You're still changing us all over again, to-day,
May your music forever play

Black striped knee-highs in your old photographs
Black knee-highs on me
Your face blurs under the breaths you take
Lips, skin, absorb, kiss, breath
His rough hands ghost over my shoulder blades
Her eyes are scorch marks on your hips
As you're pulling me into your mouth I can't help
Teasing behind an earlobe, trailing along your jawbone on my way
Remembering memory foam, imprinted on my tailbone, precarious
Beneath the divet of his thighs
And she's on you, in you, around you,
He's with me, caressing, wanting
Their scents linger within the sheets
Your scent lingers on my tongue
And I dip my head to shut them up
Shut them up - "I'm so glad I don't hate you"

"I'm so glad you don't hate me"

                                                And I know they've won.

And that's the tragedy,
Playing the might have beens,
Along with the what could be,
In my mind, all the fantasy,
Everything we might have said, that could'v'e happened in a script
I'll never write.
Were you right to end it all before I got my hands on the copy,
You were right to stop me.
Feverish and drunk, I get lost,
I know the words we might've said, all the lives we might have led,
And it kills me
It kills me up in my head, to replay them like an overture still in review
What am I now I've finally lost you, and admit it
I can't acquit it.
This must do.
All the things I cannot write have to do with you, inside my darker lusts the poetic throes of fantasy,
Are only fantasy,
Without a muse
There's nothing they can come to.

I could not blame him for his fool heart,
Not his love for me nor his parting
That he write me in good spirits or low.

Finding no fault in his intentions,
I suppose I'm content to let him,

We are but two rivers on opposite courses
If we have the same origin, or deposit,
I do not claim to know

I could no more blame him for his fool heart,
Than blame myself for mine.

Kelly came over to steal my boyfriend yesterday. It was a Monday.
She wore baby pink lipstick and her favorite new labret piercing
That meet-me-outside thunder-rolling-in hooded gaze
And a judgement call towards me that I could never meet. Well, maybe on a Wednesday. But in that I was out of luck.
It was dangerous to watch her pull up on her Viper, trail her polished fingertips along his truck. I saw her hike her skirt and shake her choppy mangled hair out from where it matted under her helmet.
I thought, at least, he'd noticed when I'd taken the brush out of my pack that morning and groomed as he bustled around the house. No?
He always did like his women wild. I'm not jealous, I'm envious.
She crept in the door and removed her shoes where I'd just ***** inside, and with her barefeet padded into the livingroom.
Now you can tell I was on my guard, but I wasn't in the mood to pounce.
You have to be, to do what she did. You have to make that decision early. Bite a lemon, shave your legs, set the intention in your mind. That someone's heart is going to get broken, some guy is going to get stolen. And this time it was mine.
So I just sat on the couch bewildered as she broke him into a smile, on a subject only people in town would understand. Do I look like I'm from town, or know hell about it? It ached so to be prodded in that scab.
She left after dropping off some bottles and a snide comment at my expense.
She didn't come back today, but neither did he. And I know.
I let him get away. Or if he's stray then he deserved to get got,
I still love him, however,
Now I love Jack, Jim, and Jerry, a heckuva lot!

Water bubbles up and over into a steady pool, in an island in a taxi circle. Where strelitzia dip low over a stone bench and the palm trees shade the southern sun. The fountain runs languidly into its blue tiled basin, clear. Inviting. It only runs in moments when I think of you so dearly that my tears over flow without a sound, welling up and onto the tenderness of my eyelids. I have no thought but that of our dear Mexico. And no better a place to store my sorrow, for I cannot cry a river nor an ocean; but a steadily working spout.
Hidden by taxis. And strelitzia.
Where you will never see.

You're a **** I watered until you overcame me

Slender fingers bite, holding fire from a gun
She sees the moon linger above the cool waves, blue flames
Trills of music from a box wound into her ethmoid bone
Love songs from another world
Lifeless, icy lips upon her palm, sliding each boot off arched white feet
She looks at them, looking at him, unseeing
Gliding on dancer's legs across the stone, feeling hollow
A shallow, dark crevice in her lungs, slim bones ringing
Clumsy hands unwinding strips of linen from her chest,
Salve binding each lid to its brother, inside there are stars
Bright, unending, singing coarse to the nape of her neck,
A beautiful embrace of salt finding each exposed bit of skin as she slips
The cloth hanging lightly across hips and stomach, the barren, sunken
Stretch of muscle beneath
He reaches, unfinding, dips his tongue across the stuck-out vertebrae across a worn, stretched spine
Stark scars written like poems into her ribs
Barest caress of nail across her illness, lost, within the blue-green waves of the sky
He wraps all she's known into a breath, the call of gulls and the fear
Of twisted sheets
Shaken strength sends her to the window, sewn
Peace willed, token
Slender fingers deft on golden clasps, butterflies hanging neatly
Clavicle to clavicle, intent to fly free
Palms entwined on the swell of the back of her calf,
Drawn out dreams, tongue rested well and full at the bottom of her jaw
Air and ocean stilled, contingent upon the trigger rested
Barrel trained between cool eyes, aside her wan mouth
Warmth flooding from his boiled blood, thrumming against her back
Constellations bleeding across her shoulders, dripping cool
Painting trails into a cruel smile
Slender fingers sting clean flesh, unfettered by the world
She sees the blue flames dance and reaches, long forgetting the gun
Sweet music released, a harmony from each heartbeat
Kisses
And nothing, sweet nothing, save trickling tears

I’m the one I think you’re supposed to hate
Because I’m the she when you find a spot to lay all your jealousy
I’m the his of the past,  that’s poisoning your beginning, and,
I guess you don’t know this, but I’m your best friend.
I’m the whirlwind that picked him up, turned him on his head,
The ******* that soaked your hopes in an acrid frailty.
I am the first red-lipped ice queen to bite at his neck
I am the first to coax “I love you” out from the pit in his chest
And he won’t fall for you as easy
No he won’t ever look at you the same
Because his boyish fantasy was a slender girl with a lopsided grin,
Who started games with his mind, that he never did win.
And you might dust off the memories, try to enroot more for yourself
But picking off the scab of me will only make him sore
I’m so sorry that I hurt the one you love, that I stuck around
I’m deemed unworthy of redemption,
I will still, always, and forever, love him more
You can't take me down.

It was never you. See, you don't exist.
But the people who love you,
Who feel much like this,
Write words you might say,
And things you might do

If you were real enough to help a girl
Find meaning from loss, and uncurl from the pain,
And return to the world
And see, wondering makes me feel
What if you were real? And what if I remain?

There are people who help others, through stories of you.
And I think you'd be proud. If you were real. If you knew.

You keep going. You cut your losses and believe in your dreams and keep trying, even if all you take are small steps. You keep going.
Because trying is valid and trying is monumental and trying is okay because trying means effort and trying can be doing or can be nothing but trying is still another step, another day, another breath, another sentence, another goal, another intention
When the depression and hallucinations and hyper sensitivity and drone and anxiety and disassociation and vices and losses and hurts and exhaustion flood and you just, can't, anymore, you must
You keep going.

Once there was a princess,
Locked within a tower
Far older than the common heroine,
Past the flush of youth and farther
She spent her days sat against the wall,
The window another reminder of her capture
And too great the allure of a fall to befell her
A vial sat beside her bed, an aid for sleep so enticing,
Spent hours pacing, contemplating the label,
Still she was unable
Her voice her only tonic in the tower
Ill one day and rasping, flushed and crawling tipped it
To lips and throat gasping,
Took her songs whole

Now many years mute and crying,
Heard a man beneath the tower climbing,
But she had no will to go,
And the prince had found his princess too old.

For what was once a saving grace,
I have now begun to suffer,
As all things I had once loved,
Have become burdens, undercover.

The merry go round sailed around on its rusty, squealing hinges. I could feel the chipped paint beneath my fingers over the metal bars serving as handle holds. The platform ridged to better stay on. My old friend swung into view among the blurring trees and swing set. He looked aged, weathered, with his unruly hair sticking in places by sweat and the light rain that had begun. It needed to be cut back above his ears. Though this way I could braid it, or let it curl around my fingers.
My laugh rang out against the cloudy playground as I went around one more time. His answered, a lofty, deep-set sound. I could hear his shoes squelch in the muddy rut around the merry go round. It wasn’t going as fast as I felt it was, but I couldn’t care less. Watching the muscles of his arms heave it before he began in a run and hopped on gave me a high. To me, we were flying. We could be superglued here forever and I’d never care. Even as my shirt began to cling as the weather worsened.
Then the weight of his sudden landing brought the contraption to lurch, then slow, and we fell as a heap on its side. “Just one more time!” I remember pleading between breaths, his heavy and gaping. His green eyes flashed, incredulous at the idea.
“It’s your turn!” he bellowed. Though we both knew I hadn’t the strength to turn it, much less with him on it. My stomach was starting to flop even as I thought about giving it a go.

Stars a deep purple, set to Nine Inch Nails and Bowie
And my fingertips are grinding down trying to smooth the edges,
Waterlogged and heavy
I'm wading through currents in a dinghy, filled with foam,
Feeling fuzzy and just a little unlucky, trying to dock it back home
The whole boat smells of brine and guilt and I'm heading swiftly towards
Nothing,
So grab a life jacket and hoist it up,
**** it, aren't you coming?

My renegade prince
Is holding a noose
Made of wild flowers

Beckons to me
What is it, darling?
Don’t you like the necklace I’ve made?

It’s not that it’s just that I thought
daisy chains would never be enough
To convey the love
I just want your love

And he smiles, this wicked ****** smirk
And says my darling, then that’ll never work
I’ve made another of yellow roses and buttercups,
He says take my hand, try it on

It tightens as he brushes my hair back
I see discarded daisies scatter, he’s humming our song
Where it just fits his fingers take up the slack
Then I know that he knows, those petals are all I'd wanted all along

If I’d never asked for more
If I didn’t cry at the sight of them slipping away
My darling how is it? as pretty as your vices
As precious as our love is?
How could love be wrong?

My renegade prince
Is holding me
Made of wild flowers and sin

and we are lovers,
daisy chains
made for each other

No matter the meadows
we lay in

I crave an old romantic, poetic love
Of broken chimes and crushed foxgloves
Of coffee stains upon the table,
And early light slipping through the window
Of shuttered eyes and tired hearts,
Of hopeful lies and ancient arts,
A love sweet off wild honey,
And of fresh bread and melancholy
Of battle wounds and salty tears,
Of lasting throughout the years,
Of endings bitter and yet cathartic
Of weathering an endless arctic,
And love with a thread-bare string,
A wish, a tender, tethered thing,
I crave an old romantic notion
Of tested, sure emotion
And love, that which does not age,
Manifests so easy, off the page.

This close to Hollywood, the stars are always out
Some come to see movies where I work,
Some say hi, others don't
They all know my name, all the same....

Most come over to me, just because you're with me
You know their numbers, know their tells,
They care about you, yeah
Their boyfriends do, too

I'm here, awkward as hell,
Used to get a hello and a hug,
Now I'm lucky for a nod, oh

I love you, you're amazing
Smart and older, better job, apartment room you don't have to share,
Manage his page, ah, I admire him...
But he only winks at you

And this other woman, my teacher adores her
Thought it was great he asked me to be his student,
I'm still proud, I will always stand proud,
But I'm not his new roommate, or his roommate's fiance,
Still I get their snaps, feel a little left out
I feel a little left out.

I'm not jealous, not really.
Don't want to be where you are.
I just want to be equal. I love you all,
Friends and stars,
I just want to be up there in the heavens, too
Not stuck in this planetarium.

I don't want to be stuck on the ground

Sometimes I feel low, you told me I don’t have to be so,
I text you when I’m feeling lonely
But when the night, slowly fades to day,
You’re just as far away, oh, oh
Give me a break
Give me a rhyme
Give me a response
Before we run out of time
With this clock on the wall, and the kettle on the stove
There’s no other place to go
Love is all that made me feel new
Far too late for we’ve got to talk it out
You just shut it down
Can you find me a purpose?
Can you find my better half
I catch your voicemail a second time,
And I begin to laugh

Sometimes I feel low, you told me I don’t have to be so,
I text you when I’m feeling lonely

Birds chirped, the smell of bacon and wildflowers coming from the kitchen, the smell of cedar from logs in the woodstove. It seemed like heaven to her, though she knew not what heaven looked nor felt like. If she could write it the way she studied it in school, those long languid days spent in the arms of her lover and learning the ways of Whitman and Dahn, it would look somewhat similar to this. To the stubble grazing her chin in the night under cotton sheets, not a plan for that day or the next. Only the hearth to keep fed and the nights to keep warm. Heaven, she thought, was a combining of two souls in one spot.

(Though the problem with that is that not only does it require trust in an undiluted state to such a point that judgement cannot waver to the extent supplied by doubt, but that love also requires a feeling that most are incapable of pursuing)
If two hearts are in tune yet only one feels it, love can fall apart. Every single time.

We sat together on the sidewalk of another ***** street. Street lights burned, it was during the quiet of the early hours of morning.
Not quite looking at each other, not quite looking away, he pulled a pack from his motorcycle jacket.
He held it out to me, I hesitated.
"It's a contract," he offered as explanation to a question I didn't ask. "Do you know the deal?"
I frowned, eyes and mind too muddy to do anything but rest heavy. "No." I tried, then thought before trying again. "It'll **** me," I processed, mouth forming the words slowly, though my tone betrayed me as steady and sure. "In the end. Won't it?"
He must have nodded beside me. He was watching me then, taking in my hunched shoulders against the cold, bones that should be young and healthy making me as gaunt and tired as I felt.
"How long do you have?" I whispered.
That haunted gaze of his wavered, sliding from my lips to my eyes, while I still faced away, faced forward. We were two strangers on different paths. Similar, yet parallel, not meant to cross.
He opened his mouth, calculating. "A few years," he offered. "Less than you." And I laughed.
A small, mocking thing. "That's debatable." Came out before I could stop to understand. I tensed, maddened, and that's when I looked at him. "What is the deal?"
Facing me head on, he didn't look shocked, no malaise tinted our conversation. "It'll **** you," he mimicked me, I felt like he was mimicking me, before he continued. "But first, it will save you."
The intone of his sentence nearly made me choke. He offered the pack again.
"When will it call collect?" I muttered, but he must have dismissed it.
We sat for a bit longer as I slid a smoke out from the package and lit up with the help of his lighter, his hands shielding the flame to keep it steady.
He looked at me, like I'd just made a promise to him that I couldn't keep, that he would make good on in the end. "You want it to save you," He told me quietly. I wasn't listening anymore. I wasn't listening.
"You want it to save you, you want it to **** you,"
In a moment he was gone and I mourned the loss.
Unsung clauses in my mind, his voice soft and loving to my ear. "I'll be there when it does,"
Because maybe, maybe I wanted that, too.

If my dad were still alive, he'd say,
"Kyra I didn't raise you to be this way,"
"I'm so disappointed in you, you're squandering your youth,"
"Didn't amount to much in College, and can't keep a job,"
"You're lazy and a slob, and I don't like your tattoos,"
"I think you cut your hair too short,"
"I don't know what to do with you,"
He'd say, "Your financial skills are lacking, you run off with those the same gender as you,"
"And you're always moving around, with your head in the clouds."
And I know it's all true.
But daddy, I grew up to be just like you.

I've got a human heart,
And it tends to break
So here's what I'm gonna do,
I'll replace it with something new

I want a clockwork heart,
Made with coils and gears,
Because maybe then,
I won't shed these tears

If I'm wired with oil,
And not flesh and blood,
Would I be happier then,
Or would it hurt just as much?

Oh, I want a clockwork heart,
I want precision and grace,
I want to chase the stars,
I want a memory drive I can erase

Because these memories of you,
Never cease to hurt me,
But with a clockwork heart....
Couldn't I make you see?

I want a clockwork heart.

Here I lay my cheek against the concrete,
Warm water lapping at my waist as
Cool rain ****** against my face, neck,
And gentle winds periodically hug my shoulders
A/C rumbles on inside, outside
only cars passing by

I want to go where the lost stars went,
Where the sky is made of glitter, and the seas of gel,
And the earth is pliant and gold
I want to go where dreams are corporeal and silver tinged,
Where the men color their eyelashes, purple and blue,
And the beds are made of feathers and the juice of plum wine,
I want to go where no one is alone, and the music boxes play,
Such sweet melodies of old love, encompassing love,
And you can travel the world in just one day
I want to go where the greatest stories went,
Where they color their world with watercolor sunsets every night,
And the found owls and water rats cry to the moon, so close you could hold it
I want to go, oh I want to go.

Tea residue,
Glowflies, cashmere
Cliffside
See the torn cloth upon the rocks,
Splinters from the mast
Salt tears, salt blood, salt from trade
Broken china
Saffron
It's all salt and sand and blood, now
Washing up the beach in the night,
Shadows from the fire light
The jaws, they gnash

The hungry ocean, the cliff's teeth, the fire burning,

Whichever takes of me first
But I would choose the undertow
For blacking out without the air to breathe,
And lungs filled where nothing could sate the thirst
Of my greedy heart above, and my ugly stomach below

Oh! You think so highly of your beard
Lo, that you would shave it for only me!
and the curly brown hair atop your head
Soft on my breast as we lay between sheets
I could write a paragraph on your thigh
the softest of your form
And trail words from clavicle to loamy ***
with poems on every scar
I could strand myself upon your chest
Straddle you there, and sing of each calf
But most of all I love your smile, with edges that cut my tongue
And the lift of every spindly lash
Could you return such prose?
A body a canvas, a romance
No. I don't suppose.