Particles
Numerous
Grandeur in their audacity to
Compare me to each insignificant blade of grass
As I stand above the overpass

Blurry reds and whites
Melting apathetically in with the dusting of pink

Almost lept from my gravitational pull
Instead remembered how good it felt
When your indecency once slid up
The opening in my dress
I stayed planted
Promising my dillusion the same temptations
Would ultimately make another appearance
In the infinite rotation of a tangled set of lucid moments

And maybe,just maybe
This time
They'd stay a little longer.

Hoarders houses
Filled to brim
overgrown fig tree's
fallen chestnuts
heat no longer rising from the asphalt
faded American Flags
TV's blaring

The pink clouds of
warm blooming roses

the musky air of
freshly put out forest fires
stale aftertaste of bitter coffee

is this your home?
Do you reside here?
How can you breathe with all of this smog filling your lungs?
Do your legs ache for a new path?

Neighborhood cats
curiously follow you
making no sudden movements
tense
on the verge of making it
past.

The eloquence of something obtainable
when all you have is this dissociated, distorted reality
where you can't even see past your fingertips
He enters in
Makes you open your eyes
appreciate the freckles on your knuckles
The way your thighs feel
wrapped tightly around his waist

Enunciates how perfect it is to just be not make excuses or apologize
He slows the time
holds you down,
lifts you out
Let's you fall
Stopping when you start to drown.

Here's where the sip
drips slowly down my chin

she elaborates on the fragments
some self proclaimed
elopement
between her own bitter desires
to distinguish any fire
while she sits like cinders
singing the same praise
he once made

alone in the corner
headset tangled
her mania ignites
it's a spark
where she once knelt in
parking lots
throwing trash over fences
she stands taller
her embodiment of life
smaller

you sing to her like she's shallow
she cascaded down mountain sides
before she bent to you
sang behind the musty moments
of lover's eyes
broke bones
to mold the same life

you claim is your rightful
and true

she doesn't even beg
if only you knew.

I kiss him while our world burns
The playground we danced in
While rainbows formed under the awning of waterfalls
I feel his heartbeat
While it all turns to ash
The television blaring
State of emergency
But I don't hear it
I don't feel it
I curl my arms inward and allow him to hold me
the spaces we tossed and turned
Slowly mold into the shape of an urn
Evergreens crashing
He folds

I'm not the way home reminds me
I waft through the world obtaining the ideals
Of unanimous prophecies

Spelling it as if it is so
He turns towards me and hands me the fine tip of a needle
open arms
Wide
Swings the words through catalytic loops

Soulmate
Forever
He says
Till the final throws of life come through my eyes
I wont breathe still youre mine

But I'm motionless
I freeze as the cracks take their form
The natural progression of ice melting
It signifies nothing
Nodding as the moonlight
Devours
I sit still for hours
Cigarette after cigarette
The thick chews of ginger candy
Wrappers clothing me

I'm the skin
Holding our bodies as they morph into one
As the paint fumes poison us
Rats tickling the walls

We lie
To ourselves
Above the sheets on the bed
I tell him I want to see the world
He perks
confused
"Aren't I your world?"

I'm captured
Captivated
The dimly lit room holds us
Locks the outside world to our own
Neuroses

We lick the faint fragile moments of
Tender
He's with another
He doesn't hold her body
Like he held mine
He looks away while she squirms
Giggles
Claws

He sits at the edge of the bed
Back toward her torso
While I lay
Legs spread
Waiting for the daylight to
Wake up the realism
The ideology
Memories of why you refuse
To exist for me

Why our bodies seem to
Slip into the same glazed over rhythmic patterns

absorbed
Stumbling
My own lips pining for
A mind of their own
A mind free of how it felt to be
Eaten alive
Stashed aside

An independent ignorance
of your design.

He licks me like I'm fragile.
Like I'm so unique, so delicate, so irreplaceable, that one false move and I could be gone forever.


He leaves prints on my skin and comes back to retrace them the next time we lie in bed together.
Surprised to see that his fingerprints existed on me hours before.
The first time I sat on top of him and wrapped my legs around his waist,
I heard seagulls in the distance.

I felt the last traces of sunlight fall behind the hills and I smelt the warm river water,
the smells of the earth kept me grounded,
placed me closer to the moment with him.
My body fell,
the way his skin seemed to trace mine so perfectly.
I didn't have to escape.
I could shoot my eyes open and watch the scenes of the empty beach
while I felt him push deeper inside me,
felt his teeth sink into mine,
felt his fingers curl
around the places I needed him to touch.
I inhale the moments where he keeps his eyes on mine,
where he says my name,
where his hands slowly slip my pants off.

I gulp them up and swallow them whole,
doing everything in my power to absorb the time I have.

The time he is here,
he is present
and he can't resist me.

I feel him in scenes,
I hold my breath waiting for the plot to change on me
and I kiss him in the spaces that smell close to home.

I wait until the morning sunlight slips in through my window,
the red sun illuminates the dashboard, his hand travels to my thighs
and I whisper what I want to say,
what I shouldn't say.

Could have been anyone
Engulfed
The page tears and it's the way
He describes how I hold
Onto every passing moment like
I'm suffocating the life out of them

Could have been anyone
I sharpened my nails to the summer nights
I promised I'd spend forgetting him
Not falling

Loving every passing body
Except my own

Must have been the way he looked through me
Like he understood
The seconds after a casualty
A crusade of
Life when all you have left
Is the smell of roses
Right after they bloom
And naked bodies
Wrapped around eachother in a
Musty hotel room.

curled over the table
I pull on the edges

his body always sat poised when he knew he was right

the way Whiskey used to spill down the sides of my lips
While they curled into a smile I did not recognize

His lips lay flat, a line parallel to the next
They don't move,
They don't hint
Or quiver

I feel the way the oceans rocks my body
The way the waves seem to control my hips when I can't even smell
The maritime air

I move out of memory
Out of nostalgia
Above him
Beside him
Keeping my eyes tightly shut
I follow a rhythm
As he pulls
Grips
Claws
I remain

Above water

I sit nodding while the sweat drips
Sliding down my spine
Tracing the marks he left
The night before

Singing alongside
Drinking the smoke from the
Orange air
Toes curling
While the AC burns hot
I don't sleep
I don't blink

I live to feel
How it passes through me
How weightless my abdomen becomes
When the world no longer watches me
When he moves his hands
Farther away from the tips
I breathe

Couldn't love me
When my body dripped
The blood soaked through the floor boards
Picturing the seconds when they strip me
Bite the tips of my toes
As they beg for the pain
To pull out my eyes

I don't scream loud enough
I dont fight tough enough
I dont lay complacent


The agitation
How they rise
How they devour

I drip I sting
My venom
Doesn't even drop them
To their knees.

Don't make me initiate.

Seconds leading up to rushing river beds where they stand adjacent

Hands held out whispering
"Don't worry, don't worry"
But I stumble
I let the fast paced movement of molecules rushing west, east.

On an atomic level I swore you were beneath me

My human instinct to just breathe to plummet
To scratch the itch
Where you stung
The side of my hips
I ached for you
I waited days
Left the lights on
Water sat trembling

My current rippling the way
The universe never seems to do what I ask

Gravity sending you farther and farther
While I sit like a magnet
Rumble in my own state
The days slur on
sun jumps
Catching glimpses of trees through the crack in the window
Forgot the necessity to eat
My ribs curl inward and squeeze.
Sheets drape
Can they be you if I close my eyes tightly?

Will they ever stop echoing the same melancholy?

I’d like to take you to this moment, it’s five in the afternoon and downtown Portland is quiet.

The sidewalks are cluttered with bodies silently moving,
sleepily dodging the sun
the sounds of sirens
doors slamming
cars braking for red lights
fill the lapses of time
I walk slowly through the crowd
reflections of sunlight jumping off tower windows
illuminating my elbow
three freckles on my forehead
my right knee
The space surrounding me smells strongly of burning tobacco
foods dipped in boiling oil
rich, dark coffee.


There’s a way my lungs jolted before and there’s way they do now.

The parachute of air running in and out
flexing like wings inside my chest.
How they used to flutter


how they once had a choreographed routine

                        designed around their sudden need jolt
                      
                                                  whenever they thought of being near lips


Now, in the shadows of concrete and plexiglass they remain following a newfound mundane routine
flapping their wings only to keep me upright
only to feed the world between my ears


I’d like you stand in this moment

                               wrap your fingers in the way loss pulls like a trigger

Wake you  up to the world where the towers finally fall
allow you to watch as they cascade towards you and feed each human instinct that follows, do you run?
Do you stand in fear?
I want you here in this moment alone
in your interpretation of a body

I want you to see the way I pull on you
the way I run from you
the way I stand
glued to the ground
as each wave washes over me

The way you came into my life anxious
the three seconds where the entire block is silent
and you can suddenly hear each and every single one of the vibrations your body makes
when no one is looking you in the eyes as they pass you by.

I don’t even know how bite into you
                                                          when you’re just the lapse in time

the five in the afternoon lull that manifests the slow
rhythmic pulsing of my heart
feeding only to keep me alive
the machine that clicks at every passing minute

                                                         I want you to crave the connection

the sounds of voices
the stem of a scream to grow inside your throat

                                                        let it consume you

the way it does me
a fear not of being alone, but never truly being seen

Counter tops

Sterile, alcohol free sanitizer

Bare feet sweating

Sticking to the glassy

White porcelain floors,

Blood soaked rags in the trashcan

Peaking above the metal box

Sneaking looks

Mocking my pathetic state

The needle digs deeper into my right arm

Small plastic tubes tickling my shoulder as they

Crawl up to the small rack that

Follows me from room to room

The bag slowly dripping

Pushing weight

Bubbling inside my abdomen

The blurry molecules of light tickle the tips of my

static lips

my spine twisting

posture arching

Slowly I melt to an almost horizontal state

Craving a hand

The sensation of touch

To make an entrance

push the hair from my forehead

Or fingers to trace my back

And pull me upright

The flicker of fluorescent

While time perpetually lulls on

I do my best to grip onto reality

Drip

Into purgatory

Slipping from a sleep

“I’ll be home later”

I didn’t have time to grab shoes

He stayed in bed, peaceful,

didn’t even lift his head

Wiping away as I speed mercilessly towards the red lights

the rain slips through the cracks of the night

I let the four am turn into nine

And I wait for him

To make time.

We got in the car
And I said “head east”
He turned the car towards the desert
No questions asked

We wind through the smoke filled streets
While he pierced through me

Always joking that
He’d never be good enough
I laughed it off
Like he had any idea

Letting my eyes drift through the whirling
Sleep deprivation that

Feeling him provides
                                      
                                     Living provides

                                                                     Wanting to escape
                                                                      Always abides

I let lovers bite into me
Beg for them to leave marks
As they track lines down my back
I whisper dreams
Of a heart attack

They say I’m too dark
Try to illuminate me
With stories of their past heroic decency
bowing at the end as if
I was just another one
In their bed of complacency


                                              I can slow to down to the exact minute that
                                              They're slipping their jeans back on
                                              While I pretend to sleep
                                              it’ll hurt when I wake up
                                              notice blank canvas
                                              of freshly vacant sheets
                                              These lover's they get high
                                              off these informal goodbye's
                                              assuming I lay in bed awaiting their return
                                              with my trembling thighs
                                              they pat their own backs
                                              Slip in between the 4am cracks



                                   But they’ll never be him
                         And they’ll never kiss me like he did
          


They’ll never be the hands behind another broken lid
And the pain subsides quickly
Anatomically
leaving the iron taste in my mouth craving

                                        
                      
                            Hunger under the rising moon
                                     I wait in my sheets
                               For another lover to slip in
                               And dig their teeth into me
                                Knowing they'll be gone
                                              Just as soon.