and when you touch someone
do you want to conquer them,
take them over, make them submit?
when you lay to sleep at night
knowing you are in your body,
do you ache to be someone else;
i wish you were someone else.
and when you choose your ego,
does it feel soft and sweet?
are you proud of yourself
when the darkness lingers slowly,
leaning over your bed frame?
when you lay still,
still as the city at night,
do you love who you’ve become?
i hate who you’ve become.

i feel wasted by hands that graced my body
that have handled me how no one else has touched me.
i live in guilt, ever pressing guilt
that i was used
in ways i did not understand
in ways that only a man can.
to feel discarded, like a body,
just a body, just a vessel,
of skin tied to skin
and when you looked within,
the dive left you weak,
you hesitated to swim.
now i’ve been wasted,
thrown upon the bed
of the truck that you once drove
that drove me off the edge.
when i contemplate too long,
i dream that i didn’t jump,
didn’t wash my body in the foamy sea spray.
i bathe in the guilt that splashes over my head,
ache for a lover that doesn’t regret me
like only a man can.

when you found me,
strung out,
vibrant, completely free,
dancing on the roadside,
did it appear to you
that i was chaotically caught up in a moment’s breath?
unsure of the next minute,
if i would trip over my own heels,
stumbling over my own inability to be still,
dancing for distraction, faking love to seem important?
when you found me,
were you stranded too?
unaware of who you were
when you took a part of me
that was never even mine
but was never supposed to be yours?
who am i after losing myself,
for a moment, an hour’s clock hand touching me,
carving the reminder into my skin?
should i be loving more wholly,
dancing all alone—how it always was,
sacrificing who i am just to satisfy who i think i am?
and maybe this does not define me—
a minute’s telling, the time in which i was most free,
a vagabond pacing back and forth
on a machine-less road,
perhaps it was solely a destination
that beckoned
and begged
and i landed straight into its arms. there is
no further cause for meaningless regret
no further reasons to burn back time to reveal
the exoskeleton of something that has always been.
for once, the freedom should not shackle me
to an idea that not even i truly believe.
when you found me,
i was someone else entirely;
and you,
you were just a moment in time,
a moving thing of matter,
clinging to anything that would hold you down.

there is
no beggar that isn’t starving for a feast
of the heart, of substance.
i beg at your doorstep, count the minutes i wait with bulging eyes.
your mother is by the television,
your sister gathers newspaper clippings,
and you, are you even home?
is your light on?
i can’t tell.
and if i beg for the love you give,
will it feel just as i’ve dreamed
or will it feel like complacency?
there’s dinner being cooked
and the steam rises to the ceiling.
my stomach growls,
but the door remains closed
and you do not come down the stairs.
i watch through the window,
are you even home?
do you even notice my shivering,
my eagerness?
would you even love the person i’ve become,
the beggar pleading at your door
to just give her substance, love?

i’ll never be enough
though i wish i could be
for you—for gentleness is all
that is necessary.
and to love you means death
and it means loneliness
and being deserted,
condemned to the ground.  
the hunters are stalking,
the vultures are surrounding,
but they cannot recognize me.
left behind with the wreckage,
grasping onto the fleeting gentle
moments that pass by like bullets,
like gunfire.
i’ll never be enough for you,
never be loud or seen enough for you.
i’ll surrender to the gentleness,
forever she will understand me.

and now i’m
chasing lovers that other people want,
crying over my hideousness,
drowning my skin in
liquid thinner than blood,
testing my limits of pushing too far.
you see,
i saw him once across the room
and his eyes burnt holes through mine.
i know such a thing cannot be done
and cannot be mine.
i spoke to him as long as i could
when you were not looking,
i’m so selfish,
i think he steals glances my way,
but his heart is without a doubt empty
and unlike a haven,
but i cannot stop smiling when he laughs at me
and it’s a sickness that plagues me.
his shadow i try to chase
will vanish when i touch it,
and i want to love you longer
and stronger;
no lover could do such a thing as you.

on the corner, there’s a woman.
and she’s a mother to the small things,
a soldier on the battlefield of life.
she loses herself in the flames that
engulf her and
she wishes she was a real poet
who knew how to summon words.
she wishes she was chosen,
just once, but the world
she loves does not love her back
and she cannot convince it to.
someone else’s bones seem stronger,
less brittle, unkempt but beautiful.
the curls on her head move like
the waves
but the words on the page
do not speak back to her
and the candle blows out
the evening closes in
with its unbridled attachment
and she’s alone with the darkness,
making a home in its skin.