Stealing light touches in the early morning
Brushing fingers over sleeves
And dipping under star-ladden fabric
That twinkles with every ruffle and tug
As it's pulled aside to reveal skin composed of galaxy swirls
An iridescent palette
In softening eyes
Changing from blossoms of pink
To hibiscus blue
And lavender purple
Encompassing shades from every flower
As hair woven from silk is mussed by fingers
Supple kisses are taken
Without warning
Sending sparks flying between
Igniting ardor for every brush of skin
Though the two must break away
For the sand dripping in the hourglass
Uncaring of the meagre time the lovers have
Cues for the ending of a morning
Filled with longing.

getting you
out of my skin,
my head,
out from underneath
my fingernails
(i’ve bled, god, how i’ve bled)
has taken some Digging,
some maneuvering
it’s taken (un)learning
reconfiguring
of all the molecules in me
see, i’ve always thought we were
one in the same.
your soul connected to mine,

our beings intertwined
having come from the same star
or galaxy
i’ve always thought we were written
in the moon,

our love destined
to be told through
to the end
by the tides

(you wore over me for
billions of years,
turning my hardness into
crumbling sand,
weaving canyons into my
rock)


but only in losing you did i finally realize,
even souls created together,
seemingly brought together by the fate of
their common roots,
can be destined to grow apart

what happens when you’re missing her?
through the blush of the petal of the casablanca lily,
there, you see? where the light gets fractured
by the veins? she dances on the other side,
shadow swaying in time with her short-lived petal sister.


loving her was like lying on my back
in a thirsty, lifeless wheat field,
watching fervently as clouds of dust
roll their way towards me.


while eventually my lungs are itching
and, with every breath, i feel the
sting of sand and dirt against the softness
at the back of my throat; in front of me,
there, as darkness swallows us whole….


my casablanca lily, she blooms.


in the moments of the modest unraveling
of her petals, she dances through her
good-byes with an ineffable ease.


if you can hear any last words from me,
nightbloomer, let me write them here.
you always did love my poetry; what better
way to eulogize my love for you?


loving you was like walking into quicksand
wearing shoes of gold, or lead.
like coming back to the places our souls touched
to remind myself of you.


like taking a picture of every lily i pass,
being sure to get the veins and creases in focus.


what happens when you miss me?
does your chest ache when you hear those
first few beats of the songs we sang together?
do you skip the painful ones,
or do you put them on repeat?


i hope you do.
i hope food loses its taste.
i hope you find yourself cold
without me, i hope you
become inconsolable,
beside yourself with grief.


finally, i want to be the veins
that fracture the light.

Why does time pass more slowly when we want it to go faster?
Dripping like molasses
Flowing like tar
Sinking
slower
s l o w e r
s   l   o   w   e   r
STOP
Time freezes
"No beat, no melody"
As they say in that famous play
Hamilton never stopped
Until that bullet made him
Sometimes I wish Aaron Burr would shoot me in the same way
Time is killing me
But not fast enough
It's the waiting that does it
But what am I waiting for?
A reason to be dead?
A reason to be alive?
A reason to have a reason?
A reason.
That's what we're waiting for.
I wonder what mine is.

Roses are red, Violets are blue,
That's what they say, but it really isn't true.
Roses are red, and apples are too.
But violets are violet, not really blue.
Oranges are orange, but Greenland's not green.
A pinky's not pink, so what does it mean?
To call something blue when it's not is to defile it,
But what the heck, it's hard to rhyme with 'violet'