deep voice drew me in —
close enough to inhale his
secondhand stories

I can change the room
but every time you enter
all the noise softens

I chase with my eyes
what my hands cannot touch — I'm
left empty-handed

head raised to the sky —
in a way, praying you won't
stop what you're doing

the world's a tightrope —
I fear nothing when we're each
other's counterweight

the real sin is not
in two men in love but in
choosing to hate love

I have yet
to understand
what it's like
to have
had touched
and tasted fire —
raging

to have
had melted
from a warmth
given off
by a source
other than
my own

and to have
been molded
into the image
and likeness
of a space
I didn't
create

I have yet
to gain
the CONFIDENCE
to cast fire
that comes with
having had
tasted you

on my knees — in a
way, praying that you won't take
your hand off my nape

don't be surprised if
my heart is at the bottom
of a barrel of
flowers and pointy daggers —
mind the cuts as you reach down

of GRAVITATION —
I want you near just as much
as you want me close

I don't wish to be
where you're not — your absence has
embittered life there

is it because I
have yet to taste that I have
yet to
           understand

lying beside me
you're the sound of heavy snow—
storm in December
just the reason to stay put
curled up by a fire — your fire

if I end up
                   dead
to you,
             I hope you'll keep all
the green bones left at
the funeral pyre — show them
to me the next time we meet

enter through the same
door he walked out of — that is
how
          you find
                           my heart

when I say don't stop
I'm pleading more to myself
than I am to you

    don't stop giving in
   'til the shape of your back is
    the shape of his palms

   don't stop yielding up
    'til your secrets liquefy
   into his whiskey

   don't stop submitting
   'til you see the skin under
   his chin sleek and flushed

if you want to shut
me up, lock my lower lip
in-between your teeth

I keep wanting you
and aching afterward — yet
I keep
            coming
                           back

sun's hot, water's wet —
and skin was just skin until
I saw it on you

dip your long fingers
in me     — I'm a lake,
                                       deep,
                                                 dark
veiled,
            calm with desire

BLUE BIRD: if you can't
in one hundred and forty
characters, then don't

they say looks can ****
but why does mine want you stripped
warm — and on my bed

you ought to be hanged
for the way you stare — gold-framed
in a museum

I don't understand
how you can be more tempting
draped, than naked — you

you — standing still, strong
like David and Venus — un-
drape me already

skin — your skin — excites
the hell out of me like it's
fine art on the street

confession: I thought
the THREE-BODY PROBLEM was
an old ****** case

glorious rain — we
are a storm within these walls
made of two bodies

you make sense — like a
warm mug of matcha latte
on a rainy day
                      門

this crowded room is
a battlefield where we take
turns stealing glances

sometimes people choke
on something edible or
wild — like his secrets

there is a void in
his shape within me — and there
are these spaces he
left wide open — places that
I have not learned to close yet

if you didn't sleep
last night, did today ever
turned to tomorrow

bridges look best when
you're in the water — best crossed
                             when with a lover

two sticks — you lit one
offered me your cig — wished you
meant         your bed             instead

we had that one old
photo that always reminds
me how I wanted
to have kids with you, and you
did have kids — just not with me

I'm always stealing
glances and end up getting
lost in your eyes, or
is it the ocean — to be
honest, what's the difference

my brain's a chem lab
and the chemist is asleep
— HELP THERE IS A FIRE!

YOU emanate GRACE
that to say — you're beautiful
would be           REDUNDANT

I might as well live
in my very own country
— PROCRASTINATION

they say, LIFE is a
                 PARTY! — maybe it is, and
                                     I'm an introvert

will the only time
I get rest — and peace — is when
I'm but grey ashes

what we see as change
when green summer leaves turn brown
is really just growth

W,

I kept thinking —
it'll be easier
if I get hit by a car

instead of going to work.

Love,
ML

even my own eyes
deny me of my own tears
— what else can't I have

I can't tell him
he's beautiful
— because then
       he'll know
         why
           he's beautiful
             to me

hey kid, listen — don't
leave the womb, don't open your
eyes — they'll make you cry

peal my layers off
eat me up and spit me out
plant me — I'm a seed