I've lost myself
in you
but much prefer the me
that grew.

All my hope rests with you, aflame.
The yellow heat of your hair
corrects the simple nothing that rests in my stomach,
a knot of weak loneliness.
I yearn to swallow you down,
my lips and mouth making trails along your skin:
neck, *******, belly, inner thighs.
I drink your honey,
I gorge on the reciprocal desire dripping from your hive.
Like drunken gyroscopes,
my eyes roll back into my skull
at the heady scent of your innocence.
All the meaning
in all the art
in all the places
in the history
of the world,
uncovered and shamed
in comparison to the luminous existence
my breath finds in contact
with your flesh.

Narrow ways, guild the asphalt freedom
wrapped in a steel bumper
ruining someone's day
with necessary body-shop work.

I've seen these steps before
felt this magnetism
been pulled so close
and here it is again.

Just
a
simple
step...
and...

Decision, vision, precision,
collision, scission, excision.

What do you do
when the person
who is
your heart,
dies?

How do you love the right way?
How do you trust the right way?
How do you accept the right way?
How do you?

How
do
you?

Oh, to get my hands upon your frame,
to mold you,
to hold you,
to *******.
To watch your eyes gloss and fade,
as your identity fades into

a glazed expression of
all the gains,
all the lost hopes,
all the joy,
all your dreams,
as all your existence collapses
into a single few moments of freedom
from yourself.

Crawls like a ******* with insect legs,
wet cool tongue tickles like a slug
up the inner thighs to the inside of the crotch.

I'm indebted to the doctor who saved me
from nature's attempt to abort me with an umbilical cord -
I owe him a bullet in the brain.

My mother's love
was only there
in her tries to cover the guilt
for strangling me in the womb.

I was counting the number
of your flaws for the first time,
trying to find an excuse,
trying to find some armor,
trying to find a modicum of control,

(letting go is always
easier
than being let go)

I was struck dumb by futility.

I was counting the number
of your flaws for the first time,
and for the first time learned,
that zero is a number.

I was sailing back to you,
I would have sailed all the way across those
vicious seas, through the rocks,
on your breeze.

I would have caught your tailwind,
and sailed, like Magellan, around the globe,
but you were turning the Earth against me.

I would have sailed back to you,
tattered sheets on splintered masts,
makeshift oars to guide me, broken.

I would have sailed back to you,
to your harbor, crumbling,
and helped repair it, fixed.

I would have sailed back to you,
but
your tailwind became a headwind,
you burned my sails,
shattered my masts,
stole away my oars, and
destroyed your harbor.

And now I float,
desperate
starving
thirsting...

But I am now finding,
in the absence of your blinding star light,
that there are other harbors
that could save me from
the storm that you've become.

You're moving out,
a bit at a time,
coming back for everything,
except me.

Those words are now meaningless
compared to what you mean to me.
Where I thought that there was no way to feel deeper,
you prove me wrong.

I am ice
and you were the cool breeze
that keeps me from melting and evaporating away.

No four letter-word could ever measure against you.

I was eating cigarettes for breakfast;
now I subsist only on the health of you.

I was dreaming of the day
I was born,
strangling on an umbilical noose;
you have slid your pink life-giving cord into my navel.

I was writing my suicide note,
but you came and lit it aflame,
blew away the embers,
wrote a story with a happy ending.

I dangled, atrophied, off of an edge,
my chalk-outline superimposed over the gaping black.
Your hair, strands of raven steel,
snaked their way through my fingers,
held me long enough for you
to pull me back.

You held my hand,
guided the crayon it held.
Where I saw only a blank
page, you showed
where the lines were and created
a piece of art beyond
anything the world has ever seen.

You are my life-support system,

Holly,

and without you,
I wouldn't be writing this.

Stagnant,
the waters polluted
by childhood nightmares
that crept about your head at night.

There are branches bending
in the marsh's breath,
weakening against
the fingers of the Sun.

I am not so arrogant as to think
I am the Sun in this metaphor,
princess.

No,
I stand in waters of my own,
dark like yours
where I wade through to you
where I pollinate your lotus,
lick your petals clean of dew,
and caress your fragile root.

I wish I was heart-broken
Sad, let-down, hurt.

But what you've done
is grind this heart of mine
to a fine black powder,
and dust
doesn't pump.

And I'm sick
So sick
I'm vomiting up
black powder
and soon, hopefully,
this stupid aching heart,
will die.

My dad is a leprous powdery-white cord of rot
that draws out of my throat lisping past tonsils
through the spaces in between the teeth.

All my life I wait for him to remove himself from me,
only to bite down as the last inches are about to pass
from my mouth.

He almost escapes - I swallow hard,
suppress the gag reflex:
he remains within me.

If you were a worm,
I'd spend my days in dirt
letting you run through my fingers
along my gentle hands.

If you were a worm,
I'd spend my money on earth
rich, black, loose
where you could live.

But you are not a worm.
You are a human being.
And as a human is
infinitely more complex,
so is my love,
infinitely exponential.

My sweet, sweet girl
spinning out away
kaleidoscope of construction paper-life
that turned me back
from the grey
and gave
me life.

I want a black-haired girl,
I want my fingers to be
coiled about by ebony,
pulled so hard it cuts the fingers
like fish line she is caught on,
(the other hand, hooking her mouth
assures she will be helpless)
as my tool opens her insides
spills every drop of oil within her
making my work
faster...

but even more
than my weight pushing her down
into a smashed doe pose,
I simply want
a
friend.

Wearing my words, she holdse far.
Fist aflame against her men,
as she stands in fingers and teeth
and ribs breaking skull.

But, oh...

How could less be more when
all that she has ever wanted
is writing this for her?

But oh...

If she only knew
all I've gone through,
skies of red,
and dreams of blue.

But oh...

In refrain like a sad song
that tears fall gently from,
is all that this boy has
for the night.

And so I beat my fists,
aflame,
on my pillow
praying my hair
catches fire.

I'm still
just a little
boy
wondering,
"What happened?"

Just a drop
on your tongue.

An act of
charity.

The brilliant memory
of the sea side
and your silhouette
so loved
it became my phone background in 2018
and hasn't changed since.

My ******* background
is simple black now
just like
my future prospects.

I see pictures of you
and recoil
in shock
at the sight
of the face
of the girl
you destroyed
(she wasn't real,
she drowned herself
inside of you).

Just like in the movies,
I'm running to her,
just like I had dreamed.

She opens herself once again,
like the light playing through the blinds
yellow fingertips creating shadows,
I enter you.

This reunion...
happily ever after all the things
we have been through,
and I am here again in your body,
the only place I ever felt I honestly
belonged...

But this isn't the movies.
There is no reunion.
There is only a pale black noose
and my life is
on the
edge.

There were hidden love notes left
and I've taken them all down
so you don't have to fear
running into my love.

You pulled
so far away
but I
kept the faith.

Little did I know
you were commiting crimes
against my heart.

And now
the faith
isn't
so
easy.

We are more than this.
The evidence?
Those many memories,
for example, this:

The never-ending date
in which at about 7:30 A.M.
your legs opened
like I was returning
to the eternity of death
through your gate-of-life
warm
soft
and wet
crying for invasion.

I knew there was no escaping you.

His ******* angel wings can no longer lift him high enough. His silhouette
stands against the Morning Glory sky. He has not worn cologne
until this day. Now, the perfume of kerosene coats him. His
matchstick countdown has just hit zero,
ignition.

In flames, he launches off the edge of that crisp concrete line. He falls
ten stories, what was once a man, now an effigy not of stone
or wood, but flame which, wind-washed,
splays out as Ringed Plover wings,
ash feathers blown back.

With a crash of bone and pavement, his Chinese Lantern skin the color
of burnt-sienna, the blaze snuffs out. Through yellow plastic paper,
the creamy skinned women rush to his side. Mother,
Sister, Wife, cradle him, the fingers catch skin
which sloughs off in
flakes of
carbon.

My burning hands caress your body's baby hair, *****.

I am drowning in you,
and I am suffocating in nicotine stains,
falling from balconies of acrimony that you pushed me off of.

My clipped wing feathers burn in bursts
of red, cyan, and lemon.

I crash down into you one last time
where my seething nails dig into your skin,
searing you right out of my ******* memory.

No.

I said I could never be mad at you
but you pushed
until you made
me a liar.

What happened,
to all the missed moments we had put in a box,
tossed away.

Dewey Decimaled
out like library index cards,
I always thought we'd be able find them again.

I never thought that before we'd go searching,
that building would be burned down by you.

I saw you out in the water
thought you were waving,
but you have been
drowning.

I'm swimming out now,
I've realized my mistake.

I'm going to pull you ashore,
or drown trying.

I rise each morning
on thoughts of you,
eager, ernest, wanton...

And it carries me up out of bed
Into my day
Until we meet again

Your love is what takes me there
floating in bliss,
lighter than air.

Crutching my way through the days,
until you come back this way.

Sleepless, harangued, hungry, tight.
Will I make it to the shore without your light?

I look to you
but there's no one
there.

And this non-silence
cuts through skin
leaving only nerves
unwound like noodles.

I can quiet this vessel
with lies and straw
like the effigy
lit to us.

She has brittle pale wrists.
She hides them,
like sunshine,
in her pocket.

Like a child
you sleep
worriless and innocent
fist under cheek
breathing sweet
baby's breath.

I look at you,
and you are twelve again,
before time took her from you
before he betrayed you
and I only wish you
this peace.

My tears
can't save you
but I hold you near
in them
like a child.

I was thinking about
your phantom body pressed warmly cool against me,

and I thought of...

tasting your harmony breath,
tracing fingertips across your vapour soft belly skin,
tickling rings around the small of your horizon bending small-of-back, grasping your silk as *** ***,
swallowing your sweet sticky blooming sugar flower.

and then...

*******
              grabbing
                              choking
                                            spanking
                                                             scratching
                                                                            moaning
                                                             slapping
                                                   biting
                                   pinching
                screaming
*******

a cleansing storm

                       all
   over
             you.

I uncurled myself today
dug my fingers right in, nails first
like putty my skin gave way
and I reached inside
sinewy tendrils I grasped like noodles
slippery and slick
and I pulled until
I removed myself
from myself
and unraveled
in a wet pile.

Do you ever get so low that so low becomes slow?
And I never dramatically quoted "that I was on a sinking
ship."
or that this heart is relinquished to obscure riddles
cement limbs
everything pale yellow-hued
cracking knuckles
limbic askew

All of my books are committing suicide
dive off the ends of my shelves
fall into oncoming traffic
pages ripped away by tire rubber
just as if they were hair

from the head of a trichotillomaniac

bandages from a burn victim's
rice paper skin
still wet and half-grafted
to dull pink gauze.

Research has shown
that lithium
is the only drug
that guarantees a decrease
in suicide.

So slow the trajectory in which you came to me,
not simply difficult to see,
but difficult to identify:

felt the same as walking through a door and looking back to see a man approaching,
try to judge if he is close enough to hold it, not hold it, or give it the push
just enough for him to take advantage.

Awkward as a traffic light,
yellow,
too close to stop,
too far to go through.

Some people in my life are felt marker streaks,
they start so saturated
but fade to nothing as they advance.

You are the opposite:
slowly building from nothing,
continuing to get brighter,
containing more
color,
until the end.

Little acorns, fallen by the tree
anchored into soil.
You had just begun to grow,
when mother wilted.

The comforting shade of her branches, gone.

The support of her vital roots, gone.

Yet you remained.

Little sapling, snatched at by a predator, tooth and claw. You held tight to the soil, setting shallow roots,
clinging to the earth,
rich with remnant memories,
ghosts.
You set your branches up, grew quickly, reached out with earnest energy,
to shade the acorn below you.

Gnashing teeth, fangs of a predator. Violence, a flash of red lust into your branches, pulling, ripping.

Yet, for your acorn, adopted, your remained.

Through the jealous filter of grief, you remained.

Through the threat to your own body, you remained.

And even though Mother is gone,
you have taken her place.
Your roots winding deep into fertile soil, finding your way through paths
she first dug,
you find your strength
as protector,
anchor,
life-giver,
to the little acorn beneath you.

The comforting shade of your branches, remain for her.

The support of your vital roots, remain for her.

Sway, little leaf.
Fragile like the wind that wraps about your mind,
pushing places where you fear you will perish.

Float, little leaf,
searching through the illumination in the dark.

It will come, little one,
it will come.

You will find a place to rest,
set down your roots,
and grow strong,
branches without boundaries,
encircling our world.

The pain of loneliness weighs you down;
do not let it.
Spin high and free,
carried by the winds of your desires,

The eyes around you are not looking with disgust,
they are looking with envy,
which makes the forest green.

Where are you,
for me to put my arm around from behind,
snake up between your ******* from behind,
my hand lightly holding your throat.
My face covered in your black hair,
scented of you,
my little spoon.

You - taller than me,
but I made you small
you fit so perfectly,
back to my naked chest,
just like I fit so perfectly
into you,
my little spoon.

Someday I'll see you again,
and that will equal all the pointless counseling and
therapy sessions that only delayed my inevitable.

All the things of life:
love
***
learning...

mean nothing in the end,
so why should they matter now?

Someday.

I look forward to it.

I've been looking up
to the stars every day

knowing

that though I can't see you
you are still here.

the trunk, withered
the leaves, fallen
the Winter, dark

And as I sat there, in the midday
That tree like family skeletal
My hope was present
My hope was bright
My hope was you.

A skin of ice
so fragile still
lit by the sky
and beautiful.

The warming sun,
is higher now
frozen wings
and solid vows.

"Shake me loose,"
she said to me,
"help to repair
my galaxy."

And Winter's not quite here it seems
Despite the white and hopeful dreams
And every moment left with her
I keep and hold intact forever.

"So when you're lost,"
to her I spoke,
"I will make sure
your stars aren't broke."

Words no longer have meaning.
I strip them of their false hope,
reaching spaces in between,
letters like notes in a song,
between which, the truth
is told.

You couldn't pry this void from me.
I grasp onto it like a greedy child,
sloppy and heady from
your soury-sweet mother's-milk,
drunk like you never were
from my ***.

Love has an empty story to tell,
and I am sick of listening.