My love
refers to me
as an artist
I maintain
that I just paint
as this
color slinger
simply reproduces
the masterpiece
her love
creates

Drowned out emotions

World War III perceived in his eyes

Not the first or last time

He wanted to tear his eyes out

The last sign of his vulnerability

But when you catch him smiling

Oh that smile—

For a beautiful second,

My own demons stop shooting bullets

To stop and stare

I don’t know what I would do
without your lips tracing those clustered purple lines
and your eyes telling me I’m beautiful anyway.
Without your hand on my swollen head
when I let eighteen years of **** burst onto that
plaid button-up I love so much.
Without your crude sense of humor making me laugh
until my ribs threaten to crack
and a snort escapes
(I don’t know how you think that’s cute)
And your professions and confessions that fill
my heart in ways I don’t understand but simply
can’t get enough of.
Without your being heating the back of mine
while I plant light kisses on your every finger
and that smile that gives away the lie
when you say you don’t like it.
Without those green eyes creating sparks in my soul
(Who knew I could house such a blaze?)
Without your jigsaw mastery
when I drop the puzzle and lose all the pieces.
I don’t know what I would do
without you.

Loving you was mistaking a welcome mat for an eviction notice and never knowing where to turn. It was stepping into empty rooms with white walls and never feeling more at home. Legend always had it that if you stare into broken mirrors you risk seeing yourself dead, loving you was staring into your eyes and getting the same result. My mother always told me that evil can disguise itself into everything you've ever wanted, I finally understood what she meant when I would watch you fall asleep and start calling out someone else's name. Sometimes I still hear your voice resonating off the walls and it sounds a lot like the door slamming on the day you left. Loving you had me digging graves inside flower gardens because I kept anticipating the mornings I'd find myself buried in dirt instead of in my sheets next to you. Loving you was putting suicide notes and love letters into the same envelope and sending them to address's of empty houses. Maybe someday they'll end up at my door again. Maybe someday you'll come back again. Maybe I die too soon to see the day. I don't know how the story ends. All I know is that I've swallowed a pill for every flower that died on "he loves me not", and right now laying six feet in the ground feels more guarded than your arms ever did.

I want you to
give me parts of
your body,
repair mine.

Sew your hands to
what's left of mine.
Like a tree tied to a post,
my stubby fingers will grow
around yours,
reaching and reaching
toward
the light.
I'll outgrow you, suffocating
your once deft fingers with my
now
strong ones.

Mold your arms
to my fractured limbs. Like
a cast,
they'll hold and
protect my cracked
bones. But
the heat, the itch,
the sweat... I'll
saw
through your arms,
freeing
my fresh limbs.

Give yourself to me,
so I can take what
I want
and leave.

I need to clothe this manic obsession
for acceptance and digital affection.
The mornings turn to midnight
before I have started my day,
and the wind is blowing reminders of Newcastle;
the lack of warmth becoming prominent
in the absence of loving flesh.

There must be a better life somewhere,
beyond uncertainty and marketed freedoms.
Beyond where only question marks
punctuate endless months
of Novembers and displacement;
the chasm between who I am in the doorway,
and who I really mean to be.

I hear you are carving a living
out of the ways you almost died in the past.
You are signing forms for others,
you are making tea for trembling hands,
all the while wondering how it came to be you
sat on the right side of the table,
and away from the wrong side of the bar.

You told me an operator will find me,
a receptive ear to put me through
to someone who will know how to help.
In the meantime, you said, I should love music,
for when the shop-fronts have closed
and friends grow fat and indifferent,
Tom will sing Hold On until I can find sleep,

or at least a viable dream.