She cooked with love  
but not In the way that most people  
think Of such things when they say it    
  
It wasn't that you could taste her love  
In the flavor or even that she loved to cook  
It was that there were always leftovers  
  
Sometimes that meant more of our favorites  
Like homemade pizza for breakfast on Saturday  
And sometimes it meant more meatloaf  

But what it always meant was there was room  
At the table for another chair or two or three  
That it never felt like an imposition to share a  
Meal or the warmth around the table with someone  
Who needed it and our friends stayed more than  
They left when she called “suppers ready”  
  
It meant that there was always food in the  
Fridge ready to be reheated and doled out  
to hungry Teenagers whether they belonged  
To her or not and that “no thanks” or “I'm fine”  
Just meant she moved to the next shelf  
and tried again until there was a “sure”  
  
And as the years went on it never changed  
Just the people around the table
There was always a friend or a neighbor  
Who would gladly fill those seats because  
Mom always cooked with love  
And there were always leftovers

Was it love or desperation?
I can't remember the distinction.  

When you're starved
each crumb feels like grace.

Each small affection
a fervent offering
to a broken beggar.  

But at this point,  
I'll take what little
I can get.

I’ve been collecting you  
gathering up all your inkbled trinkets  
as if they were mine to collect  
as if you were whispering to me again  
the secrets of your blue-green skies  
like electric pillowtalk  
  
my soul slips like broken  
sand shards  
back  
into you  
into hazy eyed illuminations  
heartbeats rhythming through  
our pressed palms  
and you almost feel real  
  
until my eyes unsquint  
until all your splayed treasure  
has been treasured and  
I am love-lost all over

I thought I could bear it,
with un-penetrated walls and flying my flag.
That the thought of your smile could hold my strength,
and fortify my castle.

Those downcast eyes and upturned mouth,
couldn't that give me just a little comfort,
a little more strength?

But those were wishful thoughts
of too good intentions.
Now here I lay toppled,
buried beneath my own stone walls.

Can you not see these,
not feel these bleeding sunset wounds?
Exposed and seething behind the brave face,
that urge every fiber within me to react;
to cross the line drawn in the sand between us.
Cast off my restraints
and pour myself out to you.

Would that soothe the aching that consumes me
and return you from that stranger's lips?
Or have time and words stretched thin,
hanging our bridges on feeble threads
waiting to cut ties beneath my steps?

I think of you  
In the days we loved.  

When we shimmered with a brilliance  
That made the sun blush.  
And we didn't care or fear  
If we would burn out,  
As long as we spun  
To glorious ash together.  

Take us then and lock us away.  
Pluck those short days  
From the script  
And write us  
No more.  
Let us be each other's  
First songs and swan songs-  
And we would be happy.  
To never know another soul  
The way we know each other,  
And we would be content.  

The truth of first loves,  
Kept safe from the wisdom  
And cowardice of age,  
That teaches us to be cautious  
With our hearts  
Reluctant in our affections.  

But now…now the world  
Would ruin us.  
Obsession weakened,  
Diluted by the mundane,  
The tediousness of days  
That tempers us from  
What we were  
To what we are;  
And shows us to be  
Dim reflections of ourselves.  

So I keep you treasured away  
In my recesses,  
In the days we loved-  
Where time cannot strip away  
Nor circumstance impose  
Its penalties.  
Where you still burn  
With reckless abandon,  
So as to consume me completely.  

But this time  
I will turn to ash  
Alone.

It drones on, with empty determination,  
the moving mouth;  
pouring out a jumble of blurring monotones,  
onto halfhearted minds.  
While stiff gears grind the rust of in-imagination  
and spin silent thoughts,  
that stay quiet and subdued.  

The people move in silent obedience  
to some empty hearted duty;  
colonizing the corridors like clockwork,  
hoping to find refuge in the knowledge,  
behind their murmuring doors.  

Solace to the lurking shadow,  
a fragile future,  
hung by fears and dollar signs.  

An intangible force,  
that makes our feet march in time,  
along the road to success.

The difference between us is simply this:

If they were to take all of you.
Distill down the essence of your smile
and the imaginative gears that whir
behind your eyes.
Add to it the bits of you scattered over the years-
your writing and art,
the stories of you that others
hold in their hearts,
and press it
into the pages of a book.

Binding you would form a
monstrous and unwieldy volume,
threatening the life of even the most
robust of coffee tables.
It would be called
“Anthology of THE Girl”

And if they did the same for me,
the book would be considerably
smaller,
and plain.
Titled: “poems to **** yourself to”

Haughty words
of wine and new lovers
frolic on your lips;
and fall on me with daggers and Greek fire.
To turn my insides to opposition
coiled with serpent knots,
staying my eyes from slumbering fantasies,
for it is retribution who hangs the stars on the night.

I fear you have cut deeper than I had permitted
when you set your steel against my ribs;
but let me not drink too heavily
from the cup of self-pity.

This was not undeserved,
earned with pleasantries and ingratitude;
but rather double edged words,
playing smoke and mirrors
to conceal my cowardly suspicions of defeat.

Finally, I have lost my appetite
for this ****** game.
My armor is worn and blood rusted,
exposing the wounds I have been rewarded
from years of waging war.

Perhaps there is still redemption
from the blood-stains on my sword.

Dreary eyed and worn tired,
On last legs, to stand defiant
Against the falling away of time,
Heavy handed and unceasing.

I remember.

Through the haze of blue white mist,
A familiar feeling,
A perceiving glance,
Breaks forth a spring of fresh thought
That flows down the back of my mind
To whet the stone,
And let memory sharpen.

I remember.

Restored from grey depths
Of dismal slumber;
To stand tall once more,
And seize the joy and pain
That first wove it into me.

I remember.

To hold that moment at times edge,
And share it once more
with the heart's palette.
To give colour to thought,
And meaning to the mind.

I remember.

And so the memory carries on
Till the stone is dry,
And the blade is weak and worn.
The withered thought, falls to rest
Under the pauper's headstone.

...Remember?

Romance is dead.  
it's throat laid open
love cascading down
murdered by progress  
by the reduced
synaptic
span
on
constant
scroll  

lips licking for the next
hit of one-click
copulation

choking on the slightest
glimmer of
.  
.  
.  
.  
.  
.  
waiting,
of elegant persistence and the  
reward of enamored pursuit  
IRL.  

the beautiful cat and mouse of our ancestry  
that wove such wonderful tales  
into the bark of our trees,  
replaced by all the clever wit  
and subtle nuance of  
peak cringe riz

swipe right  
“send nudes”  
“DTF”

Ruminating failures
a blender inside my head  

My mind drips down  
into my hands and  
I feel the grit of regrets  
between my fingers;  
slick like oil  
with flecks of sand and glass  
the greasy residue of every moment  
grimy and sharp.  

The ineffable instant  
pooling on my fingertips;  
when fate’s trajectory skews
and twists along my intestines.
Because I know-
that what I’ve done    
cannot be reversed  
or erased.    

That I have created an apex around which  
history will revolve. A fixed point    
in the vastness of eons from which  
every other thing will spin out.  
A collapsing star- whose dying light  
will shine in the black memory of the sky  
for a million  
million  
years.  

So I sit under a sky full of blown out suns  
and feel the glint of dead lights  
between my fingers.

I want to be your favorite book-  
have you thumb through my pages    
make me dog-eared and worn  
fold down my corners at the parts
where you smiled or thrummed love  
and feel your fingers along my spine  

couch curled in the yellow glow of
forty-watt warmth and a heavy blanket  
open me-  
the familiar feel of your eyes  
running over my lines  
until you know me by heart  
  
an old friend that never changes  
a lover that never leaves  
your escape  
your comfort  
for as long as my pages have ink

If our lives were captured in paintings,

each moment recorded in brush strokes

I would collect all of my

history into a warehouse,

set it on fire

and dance in the pyre's flames-

until everything

turned to ash.

you always made it look easy  
to pry back your corners,  
carve out a piece of your heart  
and transform it into soulsong  
Your words and rhymes laying perfectly over your intentions  

snapshots of your soul  
painted in love and pain and blood,  
whispers in your synonyms and syllables.  
I saw your soul laid bare, and in my heart it was just for me  
each of your tomes a secret glimpse to savor  
so brash to see myself in some  
and cowardly to hope absent from others  

so I wrote.  
stumbling after your eloquence,  
fumbling and unpracticed  
without any of your skill or precision,  
clawing at myself for something  
I could offer, to speak to you  
in your own language  
as if some small piece of you still belonged to me  

which makes you my muse  
of a sort I suppose  
For truly every time that I wrote  
I wrote for you.  
not for you, but to you  
to read me and know me  
my heart pressed between the pages of a book  

and we communed  
as close as 1’s and 0’s would permit  
through lines on a screen  
never able to reach past our fingertips  
a call and response  
in codes and comment boxes.  
A secret conversation between us,  
that not even we spoke about  
until we didn’t speak at all  
but I can still find you in the lines  
and imagine you are talking to me

trapped words that I cannot  
scrape from my mouth  
spread like poison.  
radiating tendrils  
running under skin.  

I stab the pen into my arm,  
draw out the black bile  
coursing my veins  

and use it for ink.  
pouring my pollution onto the page,  
scribbling the bleak and vicious  
cogitations  
the nefarious abstractions  
that dig into the hushed  
corners of my soul.  

I hope to drain myself-  
enough to return colour  
to my veins,  
bleed red once more;  
taste joy and love  
on my palette  
in place of ash,  
and the ruthless regret  
that clings to my tongue.  

I am fading,  
withering like a husk.  
I fear I will run out of ink
and find nothing red left

will you come to my funeral?  
I'd like to imagine that you would.
but you probably won't even know that I'm gone  
until months or years have held me underground

it would be fitting
in some morbid irony
to have our many intersections,
always crossing at bad timings or circumstance,
be punctuated with the greatest chasm of all
the last time that you see me

but at least I won't be there to **** it up
Anymore

You are my late September,  
When spring has long been forgotten  
With its newness, lush green and raindrops.  
The rambunctious giddy splendor of sweaty palms  
And arterial palpitations.  

You are not summer, hot and dripping,  
Air thick, smothering with inescapable heat,  
Panting breaths and desperate lips.  
Perhaps once or twice as we revolved around each other,  
If night airs could tell tales.  

You are not winter,  
Though we have shared Decembers.  
There is no place for you in my snow tipped trellises.  
No coordinate in my circumference that would hold you in ice,  
Frozen and forgotten under rippled white blankets,  
Though perhaps, under wrinkled white sheets.  

You are not fall,  
When autumn turns the ground dirt and dull.  
Trees shedding their raiments  
And reaching naked for the sky.  
Surrendering to the inevitability of winter’s approach,  
Drawing sap down to their rootwork,  
Waiting for another spring  

You are my late September,  
The earth still warm between my toes  
With the remembrance of summer suns.  
More vibrant than spring, and wiser than summer.  
Leaves full of tree-song  
Brilliant gold and fire,  
Blood orange and melancholy yellows,  
Blazing in defiant glory.

there will always be you and her;
her, by vows and bands tied to me in  
years and pledges  
and you, undeniably etched into  
me like fingerprints on my soul  

and i have tried  
until fingers and wrists bled raw and numb  
to scrub you from my bones,  
spread my ribs and unwind you from around  
my spools and gears, unthread you from  
my fibers, but you are too intricately  
entangled into my workings  
to remove you would be to remove myself  
and i have tried  

so fate would have me split on both  
sides of a coin, always being  
both but never really either  
together and alone  
contented and longing  
whole and fractured  
but never truly complete, one  
half always diminishing the other  

There will always be you and her

stone rolls between my fingers like I am the earth
tumbling it beneath my soil rumbling an invocation
of shape and purpose to this tiny prayer of rock

hard dimpled-smooth skin like wings
It knows the bird dream steps of water dance
winks sideways at the sheen surface mirroring
against the wriggle of nature and fate so
that nothing snakes between shores

I whisper my opus in granite and
defy it against gravity

mountain-seed kissing across water’s horizon
aria in flight slick whizz smack of hope skimming depth
then spent sinks to rest in new shallows

impetuous ripples ring along your shore like
sapphire mischief to ebb the sand gritting
between your toes and I wait for you to
ripple through the rhythm back to me

It seems that we were always destined  
to be made up of stolen moments  
Distilled seconds filled with the universe.  

In a hallway  
In hands clasped under a desk
In twilight whispers over copper threads
that stitched us together
In pools of street light and darkness
flickering through the windows of a bus

If I could choose one moment
to stretch out into eternity
god, it would be us

But in truth the grains of sand
that measured our length and breadth
were scattered few and fleeting

Forever looking in others
for what we were always destined to lose

Did she notice,
when she walked down into my eyes
that my sight stole my voice?
To return in stuttered, half compliments
of flitting words.
too flimsy to hold the heart.

Did she notice my staring gaze,
my eyes, casting timid glances
while I searched myself for eloquent words
to tell her my knees were weak,
and my heart was beating
with good dishonourable intentions.

Wrapped in midnight
and pink hued sunset horizons.
Hiding some and alluding to others,
the woman curved beneath the clothes.

Her hair up, in golden silk curls
to celebrate tonight
with full passioned lips
smacking of sultry invitations,
and drowning deep sea eyes.
Sporting a breathless smile
and black heels.
While I feel so ordinary and tedious,
dressed in my fine suit
and matching offsets.

She takes my hand
so everyone can see
that she is mine.
And now I am alive.

How beautifully she shines;
beyond the limit of the eyes
to the scope of the heart
and the extent of the soul,
that see in different dimensions
than sights' perception can go.
To unmask the splendor
behind the face.

For this is what pulls the strings
of my surrendering;
A man and clothes
may make each other,
but a woman
will make him feel it.

ships sailing;  
night sky navigating along  
divergent constellations  
that plotted our courses.  

meeting only where our stars crossed,  
or collided  
in sparks.  
sharing ports for a few years,  
a summer,  
a night.  
only to weigh anchor  
as the sky shifted,  
following after the next coordinate  
on our charts.  

it has been so long  
since I have seen your sails  
tilted and headstrong towards  
my waters,  
since the stars on our charts  
found an overlapping point.  
I wonder if we are still sailing  
under the same sky.  

or perhaps you are dry docked  
having forsaken the sea  
for shore,  
and left behind the lilt  
of the tides.  

whispers of you  
on the waves,  
as I hoist my sails  
once more.

there is a part of me that nobody knows  
except you  

I keep it under lock
strapped down and chained  
starved, pale and gaunt  

to quiet it  

to silence it from calling out in the still  

to **** it if I could  
and be done with it  

only for you to undo me with a whisper  
with words in a line,  
with a memory  

that throws off my desperate restraints  
lays waste to my barricades  
and breathes fire into me.  
making the chaos so full and loud  
inside me  
that it suffocates me  
and i cannot breath  
or cry out  
or find relief  
except to surrender.  

a beautiful unraveling  
of skin and bone  
that strips me down to my soul and fragments  
to give everything that I am to you.  

with a whisper you could tear me down to atoms  
you are my beautiful destruction

There was a time  
when putting voice to
silent declarations  
unspoken longing  
you would have uttered my name  

And it would have danced  
along your strings

A to Z and all the letters caught between
that line themselves along the shelves
and rest between the bookends,
they don't have the words I need.

A to Z, and all the letters caught between
I can't fit them together anymore,
I can't make them sing,
curved lines and crescendos to ****** the ear
with honey soaked harmonies.

They fall from my lips and slip
under my meaning,
tired and worn,
crumpled in my hands.
Or is it my hands that are tired
of these frail words,
showing the ****** remnants of ambition?

I put them back until I need them again,
for something simple,
a conversation with a net.
Hellos and how dos,
the pitter patter
of banter
on my tongue
designed to hide the heart.

So I will let them rest
until they sing to me again,
or I find a new alphabet.

I cannot love you but I do.  

I cannot hold you or feel you under my fingertips  

I cannot run my hand from your shoulder down your arm,  
slip my fingers into yours and clasp hands  

I cannot quench my lips with yours  
or taste you on my tongue  

I cannot feel your warmth under the sheets on winter nights  
or the cool of your breath on my neck in summer  

I cannot see you in the morning, hair tousled and sleep in your eyes  
or when you walk around the house so casually  
scant, pretending you don't know that it drives me wild  

I cannot find my world in you at the end of the day  
or quicken my heart when I hear your keys in the door  

I cannot wipe your tears or hold you when the world is broken  

I cannot share the joy and sadness in us both, as one  
who understands the scars on your arms and  
on your soul  

I cannot call your name in passion  
or for comfort in the middle of the night  
or see the promise in your eyes as the syllables tumble over my lips

I cannot hear your voice with its bubbly and sultry intonations  
whispering songs and secrets to me  
or get lost in it's sound for hours  

I cannot love you in my arms,  
So I will love you in poems and memories and dreams  
and sing a song for you in the silence

I still have it, the CD you made for me  
when we were young and dumb,  
and mostly honest

each song you selected  
hand written so carefully  
in fine tip marker  

I listen to the songs like each one is for me  
your words sung in someone else’s voice  
at least the parts about love  
the parts that I wish were us  

sometimes it hurts  
and sometimes it doesn’t  
and sometimes it feels like a hole in my chest  
like right now

it makes me wish I was your glory box
but instead you’re my sour times

The last time I saw you, I smiled, and feigned  
Simple friendship with my lips.  
I walked beside you down a narrow forest trail,  
Tall grass playing at my fingertips, until we emerged  
At a stream, where we sat and talked.  
While my heart beat your rhythm in my ears  
So loudly that I never stopped to wonder,  
If my rhythm was beating in yours.  

I don’t remember most of what was said.  
I can see your eyes, sparkling,  
Darting between mine and the water,  
Your half smile, playing at the corner of your mouth.  
I can see your lips moving, soft and full  
As they wrap themselves around syllables,  
But I can’t make out the words  
Just the thumping in my ears.  

When I leave, for the last time, we hug.  
I feel your soft warmth against me  
And wonder if you can feel yourself  
Thundering behind my ribs.  
I hold on, only a second too long,  
Despite the aching in my blood not to let go,  
Not to unwrap myself from you.  
Because part of me knew, this would be the last time.

Why did I come at all,  
When both of us knew that the stars were already  
Spinning us out of orbit.  
To prove to myself that you were just a friend,  
Or lie to myself that you weren't a lover.

I should have never come,  
Or never left -  
But all we say
is goodbye.

I held myself to you,  
Desperate to fit to your curves  
And push myself into your gaps.  
I hid at your center
When you were mostly edges,  
Still filling in the spaces around you.  
All your pieces jumbled and piled together  
Waiting for you to dive into them  
And fit each fragment along your lines
Piecing together your parts.  

Each piece betraying me more.  
Calling me out as an imposter  
As I tried to hide my edges from you,  
Carve off my corners and make me round.  
Fearing as your shape emerged
You would realize I didn’t fit  
Within your borders,
Discarding me for a piece that did.  
And I i would see your puzzle  
Complete    
Without me.

a stranger walked past me today  
and I smelled you slivering  
through the air like incense  

then she walked on  

oblivious that you had been  
conjured from vapor and  
pushed into all my senses  

traipsing through me like  
dragons fire and spring lilac  
our beginnings and endings
in the span of my lungs  
dissolved back into  
breath and wind

I'm sitting here with a razor blade  
that says she's my best friend,  
and her voice is so smooth  
I almost believe her,  
wouldn't you if you were me?  
  
The night always seems to call  
roulette and razor blades into my veins,  
when thoughts of you are knotted in my stomach,  
sour coils of flesh  
that drudge up the darkest thoughts.  
Words that stain the air  
and turn to rust on my lips.  
  
I thought I had finally cast out this craving,  
the hunger running under skin.  
I can see it when I close my eyes,  
the river wrapped around my arm  
trickling down to death.  
  
And the devil on my shoulder  
whispers sweet nothings  
through bloodthirsty lips.  
  
The morbid thoughts shed skin  
and become the virtuous  
in the cover of dark.  
When the mind crosses over  
and wanders into the realms that daylight forbids,  
or daylight forgot.  
  
I'm sitting here with a razor blade  
that says she's my best friend,  
and her voice is so smooth  
I almost believe her.  
She says that she can make it quick.  
Press it down, blade to bone.  
It won't last long enough to trouble anyone  
and neither will I.

I hope with everything within me;  
on the moon and shooting stars  
old stone wells and white horse waves  
that I am not forgotten  

I still come to the shore and  
wade into the waters,
feel the  current pull against my legs  
threatening to drag me out  
and abandon me in its expanse.  
I steel myself to the waves,  
to the unrelenting deep between us,  
and sing songs across the sea.
some for you
and some for me
and some, for us both,  
and I pray I am not forgotten  

there is a fear, a quiet anguish that  
looms in me like a shadow;  
that the sea has swallowed my voice,  
shipwrecked my song below the waves  
and I am made a stranger.  
an insignificant dot over your horizon.
like so many things
whose time has come
and gone.  

So I hope.
that life has not judged me too fairly,  
that somewhere I am happy,
hidden away inside you  
on a shore that I will never see
and I pray I am not forgotten

Press it down against the skin,
just enough to make a crease;
sharp side down.

Pull it back
smooth and perfect,
exchange this pain
for one that's eloquent,
warm, and sharp around the edges.

Tracing the blood inside my veins-
with red lines
carved across my wrist.
Another scar,
flowing red and honest.

With each stroke
I etch this strange relief,
Admiring the red and silver swirls
that make the masterpiece,
and drown the sorrow
that brought steel and flesh together
into this unholy union.

The sweet taste of torture,
sharp side down.

I spent weeks  
and months  
and years  
carefully collecting you.  
gathering your pieces  
and promises  
like stars plucked from the night  
and placed in my pocket.  

each moment  
that your lips held my name,  
that you called me your home  
and whispered forever  
into my veins.  

But forever never lasts.  
the stretching out of our infinities
cut short,  
toppled-  
in a few days,  
a few minutes,  
a few words.  

my years of  loving labor  
smashed into  
stardust.

I am stone  
impenetrable and rigid in my moorings  
duty bound to be -  
the foundation for feet and  
dreams that stack each brick atop me in  
false hopes that I will withstand time  

the weakness inside me mining out my ores  
each one chiseled and dug out until  
the vein is bled dry  
a cavern made by the relentless drip of everything i am not  
filing the space between my skin with nothing and  
praying that my seams will hold me together  

I am fine

I want it to stop.
not anything in particular,
as if one thing could fill me, or fix me
or glue all the cracks that are leaking me out

I want it to stop.
just everything
everything that's inside me

I feel like a void
empty and full of longing,
and a suffocating panic, knowing it will never stop
that I will never be filled and i will stay like this.
until I'm not like this.
because I am not.

so i think about being not
more than being,
and somehow that seems better
and easier, and hopeful

If only some of those comforts,
in words and arms and love,
spoken over me in memoriam
could find their way to me
while they could still find me

perhaps they wouldn't need
to be said at all

Whenever I read your voice  
Draped across the tree-tops  
In misty strings and fog  
its ships sailing.  
  
Wind-whipped sails ripple,  
Wave-wake slaps along salt-worn planks,  
The smell of ropes and rigging.  
  
The feeling of open skies  
And unfathomed depths—  
Swirled green, turquoise, black  
Sea dragons and sailors,  
Treasures, charts, and pirates.  

You skip so easily along the tips  
And tops of the world.  

Horses run across water.  
Wars and lovers both rage  
As the ground shifts,  
Tides bulge and bow, ripping at the shore,  
Tectonic plates slip and crumple  
Shaking the world's foundation.  
It revolves in orbit,  
Balanced on the tip of your tongue.  
  
I am cross-legged,  
Listening to the way the world is  
Watching birds cut the sky  
Bleeding onto the clouds  
Listening to the creak of your mast  
With envy.

time, the great unraveller,  
unwinding things into  
eternity with heartless determination.  
I have seen it lay rust along  
affections and arteries so  
that neither may flow or pump,  
but i always thought us, or  
hoped us, more rare  

that the constellations hung in your eyes  
would never dim for me,  
but guide me as they always had  
to home  
to you  
to us.  

perhaps you never dimmed  
only the constant erosion by minutes and hours  
chipped away my veneer, and the truth  
of me has made mutiny of your affections.  

when did I become someone you sleep beside  
and not with?  
the inches between us stretched out  
like country roads in winter, belying our beginning.  
my fingertips and your skin thick as thieves  
adventuring over the lines of your horizon  
each curve and mound and crevice  
the hot breath of exploration panting on our lips  

I can only fabricate excuses for so long,  
brushing off your brush offs,  
the turned shoulder,  
the recoil of my hand in the small of your back,  
the betraying hesitancy in your lips that  
wounds me like an unpracticed lover.  
when did you exchange your desire  
for obligations, wicked and sour?  

you blame it on chemistry  
hormones and pheromones  
molecules and valence bonds  
breaking apart our marital-structure.  
so I curse science and pray for alchemy  

I'm tired of sleeping  
In bed with you  
alone

It's hard to see from so far away-
at least, from what I can tell,
you are happy.
Happier? Probably.
Lounging in the 9th stratosphere,
maybe even so far as
just past the moon.
And who wouldn't take that trip?
The most I could offer was a pig
and some ****.

Maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe you would have lived life on the ground
but I never believed it.
Never wanted to squish you down to earth
and keep you contained,
bursting at the seams beside me,

waiting for you to understand what I had always known:
The ground under your feet was as needed
as the wind through your fingers,
the sea in your lungs
and the stars in your eyes.
And that you were always going to leave.

depression feels like heartbreak at sixteen  
perhaps that’s why I always think of you  
when that unyielding squeeze starts to roll  
around my stomach like a rotting stone  

it's strange to think that of all my stories  
yours is the one that always wants to be read  
we were just sketches and outlines and isn’t  
time supposed to be the great physician

it seems timing is everything Once Love and  
ours was always perfect in the worst way  
just right to wedge you between my newborn
ribs like a thistle that sticks to my bones  
  
so I chase you like salvation  
knowing you have none to give  
and I’m always running  
in dreams

you loved a boy  
and he loved you  
though he had loved before  
or at least, had thought himself to love before,
this was wholly of a different kind

the love he had before didn’t feel like this.
true, it had started off with heat and sweaty hands,  
as most loves do,  
but then it lost its brightness and became cold,  
something that ate away at the boy  
and however much the boy offered  
it took and took  
and never gave  
and wasn’t soft or kind

so the boy was left broken  
in more ways than he ever told,
in more ways than he even understood.  

but then you loved a boy,  
a boy who was broken  

and you were good, and beautiful, and true,
and your voice sang a love song that was only for him,  
and your touch made him fear that his heart would break
in the most wonderful way

and the boy loved the girl  
completely  

this love was warm and soft  
and air and breath and life and  
more  

all the boy wanted was to be
consumed by the girl  
just to be closer to her  
so that he was never apart  

and then it was gone.  

and the boy was confused  
because this love hadn’t changed,  
it hadn’t grown dim or dark,  
it was soft and full and fire  
and gone…

and it could not be the girl  
because she loved the boy,  
she had told him
In her honey whispers late into the night.  
the boy knew her words were true  
because she was good and true  
and because she had saved the boy  

then she was gone.  

and the boy was left more broken than before,  
the only thing left in the boys heart  
was the horrible thought, that perhaps  
he was not worthy of love;  
and it was horrible,  
because I believed it to be true

So innocently devious
in naive treachery.

More than a fancy walk
Could steal a man's glance
And invite a sparkling collar.
Or soft spoken passion compel the flesh
To gratify its hot appetite.

To speak elegantly of this and that,
And trap me in the stillness of your voice.
All the while you trickle down my vein
And melt away my heart's wall.
Brick by brick,
To my very foundation.

How freely you throw out these kind gestures
That hang me from your words,
And fill my head with empty waiting thoughts.
How carelessly you stole this
From under my ribs,
With a sideways eye and a smile
held in soft lips.
To dance across the room
And ****** it with a whisper.

Beautiful thief.

Fire has to burn.  
I wish I could hold it.  
Feel its flicker – blue flame  
luster spiraling along my lips.  
Have it dance on my fingertips,  
sweep across my longing skin
in streams of copper gold.  
Tuck it between my ribs  
and tame it.  
But fire has to burn.

I open my ribs.  
peeling back the sinews and  
capillaries with precision.  
The crack of spreading bones,  
my chambered apparatus laid  
delicately on the table.  
  
My implement extracts its pound
onto the slab with intention,  
pulled and pressed till it's paper  
thin and bled out. Soulspeak scrawled  
in the crackling veins of my parchment.  
  
I put my machinations on display  
for onlookers, merchants  
and collectors  
but none seem to gather any interest.  
Skinpull another page  
but nothing sells  
or charms or foments.  

I pack my wares and  
toss them onto the pile of  
my dried out corpse scattered  
on the floor.  
Failure.  
Another procedure.  
Relent, repeat, cut deeper.  
And hope to find a reader.

you used to sit on me and swing  
cry and swing  
laugh and swing  
tell me of your dreams and fears  
and love,  
as we slipped back and forth  
through the air  
hung from the strong branches  
of our tree  

the ground beneath me  
well worn dirt, surrounded by grass  
The evidence of our days  
and hours  
carving out the earth together  

I am still here,  
tethered to this tree and waiting  
the ground beneath me  
growing greener and more empty  

sometimes you will come  
and sit on me again  
and swing,  
the beauty of purpose  
flooding through me for a moment  

but now when you swing  
it is mostly quiet  
like you are here but I am not  
you do not speak to me,  
do not dig in your heels and toes  
scrape the dirt and push off-
the ground beneath me  
forgets your feet as soon as you are gone  

and I am still here,  
tethered to this tree and waiting  
the ground beneath me  
growing green and empty