I feel flesh on fire
light my skin
and name me pleasure.

All hands
and waist
and thighs
and bare.

Lips not only inhaling
what the other exhales.

I still trace my hands on my collarbone
the way you did that night.

I named my pleasure after you.

The ocean's foam
consumes me whole
as I am tossed
back into the rapids.

I drip into the palm of your hands
and make my home in the lines,
filling every crevice with myself
so I may always be by your side.

If you had blinked you would have missed her.
A figure made of mist,
drifting just above the water
dripping with light
and drooping with melancholy.

She had moonlit skin,
and I watched as beads of the heavens
slid down her body,
crystalized,
and dropped
into the pond below her.

I catch her eyes in surprise,
filled with wonder and stars
as she disperses across the water.

I pick up the stone left behind
and like a fool
I name it:
Moonstone.

The reflection of the moon sits
in the middle of a pond.

My favorite thing to do as a kid was to play god.
I sat near the water with swaying willows
and the sharp scent of the night air
and dipped my legs into the sky,
coating myself with what I believed
to be heaven:
the stars and the
inky blackness below me.

Ripples in this water
were simple evidence
of my eternal and formidable
power.
Who else could cause waves in the sky
but God?

But no matter how hard I tried
the moon evaded me,
and I pretended we were friends
and this distance was nothing more
but physical space between us.

I could keep playing God,
and she could still have her space.  

I may have been baptized with the sky
and gone home
dripping with constellations,
but always wondered,
maybe all I had
was the space between
me
and
the moon.

I knew I was not worthy of her anointment,
but I pray whatever argument we had gotten into
would one day be resolved.

I no longer play God

But all I have now
is still the space
between
me
and
the moon.

And I wonder if I would have become God
if we had just
made up.

Often deserved,
yet seldomly effective.

I think divorce papers taste like the ash of a cigarette falling from his lips when he told her the news.

Like whiskey burning fiery hot as it slides down the back of your throat,

with bitter sweet tears pooling in with umami ink, the saltiness hitting the tongue like the papers to the floor, a weeping widow who does not suffer from a death but an absence.

I think divorce papers cut up throats like the edge of a chip, swallowing the news over and over again does not seem to make it go down any easier.

I think divorce papers digest like a cheap meal, the kind that you know will give you trouble, but also know is better for you in the end.