The world sits before fingertips
like piano keys yearning in stillness.
I become nervous
and flood the possibilities with sinking ships.

Thats what childhood gave us lost ones.
the ability to understand probability,
realistic expectation,
no fairytale miracle to rescue our slipping love.

We may be sarcastically prepared
but where does that leave room for hope?
There is no hope in the live broadcast of bodies falling from towers
nor in the closets full of kids hiding from loving fists.

After all, those who lost innocence too soon
need a reason for the soul
more than the noble lie of love.

Some try to replace their love with circles.
The heartbroken soil of earth,
littered with mathematicians and linguists,
is now veiled between narrow strips of light,
revealing each unconscious glove,
fact checking their painting upon bright,
calming their hubris with symbols,
excluding truth in dark night.

Those with wandering toes
try to ascend to the sky,
twist toward the ceiling of branches,
attempt to swallow books of romance,
then settle into tree roots,
only to find their bones
broken by different forms of fate.
Crying out with constrained lungs,
their heavy thoughts
often coat lonely lullabies of our comfort.

I wander in and out of the striates,
brushing fact and wanderlust
with fingerprints of lonely curiosity,
pressing reflection upon papyrus.
Occasionally seduced by poetic freedom,
my hands make an attempt
to climb the bark of lost songs.
Yet, I always fall from the ascent
upon the same destination,
our graveyard.

Refusing to accept your silent departure,
I watch a young boy scream delusion
at our crumbling faces.
I place coveted trinkets
of blue bonnets and snow white sand,
simple moments of easy sacrifice,
at the feet of your flaming alter.

Our inky history swims into my nose
as I press the pages to thirsty pores,
smelling the scent of what was.
The ode to flaw reeks with rot.
So, I remove the last page
before my burnt hands
reverently let the others fall into the fire.

I stuff the last page into my throat,
letting the black liquid and white paper
become a part of my changing nature.

I find hope in this power,
The simultaneity of creation and destruction.
It soothes my tidal doubts with encouragement.
The piano player must love the ancient poetry
destroyed in the birth of each new ballad.

I once met a man who read my bellybutton.
He told me that the two horizontal lines
meant I have internal and external insecurities.
I scoffed at the idea that those things
could disappear from mortal souls.
He then pointed to the bottom vertical line,
the most noticeable,
and told me
that meant
my biggest insecurity was my reproductive organs.

I smiled small.
Should I tell him about the dead baby
or instead of the riley women who have male dependency.
I chose the latter,
for Im not sure if the kid is still dead.
I could hear her screams in late night alleys for two years after.
She haunts my horror dreams,
singing we could have lived happily ever after.

Instead, Ill chose the story of my stepfather
who called me a *****
and cried to my mother
that I was trying to ****** him with training bras and black eye liner.

'Did he hurt you?'
'of course,
but so did my mother-
and I've learned to forgive those
who chose life over freedom.'

It's more than I've done.

My favorite part of the day is in the foggy parts of 6 am.
The time you wake up to get ready for work,
Put your jeans on, your socks, and your sweatshirt.
Then, you climb back into bed and wake me up a little bit more.
You wrap me up and hold me tight.
Then the alarm goes off at 6:30 and you put your shoes on and leave.
I go back to sleep and wake up later to get ready for class.
I will always love those bits of time between 6 and 6:30 am,
Because that is the time we share our unspoken love.

My heart doesn't skip a beat anymore
when I see you, it pumps twice faster
ricocheting to my throat and suffocates me
and sometimes I think you can hear it
a familiar beat you held to your ear before
you look around wondering of this nostalgia
your fingers cold to the touch it used to bring
craving for the sear when they touch my back
once, your eyes found mine in the sea of people
and they play our happy memories
and they smile at the thought of it
and they slowly realise, the hurt
and they become blank again
and they were the last I've seen of you;
reminding me of what we once had and how
we'll never get it back.

he wants to discuss the
universe so
im pretty
stoked.

Is it?
Only a table between us?

The Abramovic ☐ Ulay kind of distance?

No more corners?
No more plates?
No more legs?

Only this weather-resistant table?
Is it?