you spoke with your back turned
like nothing was wrong
the kettle sat screaming
its blistering song

your eyes crack with thunder
I don’t look away.
I taste every stormcloud
and swallow the rain

you asked if I loved you
then smirked at the floor
i said it too slowly,
you moved for the door

We fought in the hallway,
your knuckles went red.
You hit without blinking
and meant what you said.

you find every fracture
then press where it stings
You say, “it’s devotion,”
and tighten your strings.

You lean in, now limping,
your voice raw and rough.
We clutch like survivors
who'd suffered enough.

Your hands then remember
what you never confessed,
you kiss where you hurt me
and ask for the rest.

but still, when you’re shaking,
and all fury’s gone,
I gather your pieces
and whisper a song

I stitched up the silence
you gave me to keep
and rocked us together
til sorrow found sleep

We curled in the ash
what didn’t survive,
and found even ruin
leaves something alive.

Old man stands alone,
shirt undone,
hair silver and lifting,
the sky begins to split.

The storm enters
not with cruelty,
but with memory,
that deep breath before
the world unbuttons itself.

Thunder cracks like bones once young.
The rain walks sideways,
then vertical,
then all directions.
He does not move.

Was the storm that raised him,
not his father,
not a stiff lipped god behind a pulpit,
but this:
a violent choir of wind and water
tearing through the trees like language
he always understood
but never spoke.

Remembering it in his legs,
how the wind,
long ago,
swept him off roofs,
out of dry judgement,
into open roads and beds and truths.
How lightning never hit him,
but always pointed
and directed.

He once chased it,
barefoot,
drunk on youth and refusal,
beautiful clouds, black and blooming.
giving permission
to crack open,
wiping dullness off the skin
that last coat of sleep.

Now, old and alone,
he feels it again,
that holy silence between the strikes,
that rush of air through the ribs,
the kind that makes love and sin feel small.

The wind doesn’t ask where he’s been.
The rain doesn’t question strength.
They just take him in,
pulling his bones into a long, level song.

No one watching.
No one shouting him back inside.
Only black clouds
reaching low enough
to press their foreheads to his.

In that communion,
the unspoken pact between man and squall
he closes his eyes,
and lets go
of names, of time, of answers.

Only the storm
knows who he was.
Only the storm
still loves him for it.

She undressed in the mirror.
Only the reflection watched.
I found her candle,
cold and forgotten.

Her hands moved like smoke
understanding how to be skin again.
Not performance. Not pleasure.
Just unlearning the habit of vanishing.

Her shadow held her shape
longer than I did.
She said: “Stay,
but forget.”

Her child slept,
four states and a foster name away.
She traced a name in steam,
the S curling like turning in sleep.
then let it melt under a kiss.

There was a song
caught in the ceiling,
something we never played
but always meant to.

I kissed her hair while it was still hair
and not a question
left behind on a pillow.

I opened the door,
it sang some other man’s name.
A line drawn, erased. No message left.
The room forgot its language.
My ghost obeyed
and lifted.

You smiled
like I was worth the wait-
or the lie.
Couldn’t tell.
You left the kitchen light on too long.
I stepped inside.
The floor gave way.

I slept beside you
as a thief
-quiet,
not for comfort-
but for the hush
that comes
when no one asks
what you’ve done.

Your shoulder
held the part of me
that still wanted
to be forgiven.
I kissed you
like confession
with no priest,
no promise,
just heat and teeth.

You didn’t flinch.
Didn’t ask what made me
this way.
Didn’t try
to fix it.

I’ve burned names
like receipts.
I’ve swallowed shame
like spit.
Walked out
of too many mornings
with hands that still remember
who they touched
and didn’t deserve.

But you-
you just set a cup beside the bed.
No questions.
No sermon.
Just water.
Just presence.
Just mercy,
without the bow.
I drank the quiet.
It didn’t heal me,
but it stayed.

And when you sang-
not loud,
just soft enough to hold the air.
you said my name
like it was still mine.
Like it wasn’t
something I’d dropped
on purpose.
Like it could
come back.

We woke to laughter and breaking glass.

not hers, not mine, not morning yet.

The ceiling blinked a single eye.

A moth drew circles on my chest.

Outside, a streetlight peeled its skin,

blue steam hissed from its broken throat.

A train passed through the bedroom wall.
a hiss, then cabled rolling float.

last night was full of paper moons,
of bitten spoons, of matchbook lies.
My pulse made bargains with her skin,
her hands spoke truth her mouth denied.

I drank from bottles filled with bells.

Each swallow rang a darker note.

She stitched my name in spider silk

and pinned it in her winter coat.

The carpet blooms with cherry pits.

A handprint shimmers on the sink.

The mirror mouthed a warning once,

but I forgot how not to blink.

I gave her maps I’d drawn in ash,

each road a lie, each city torn.

She read them like a child reads stars,

the kind that die before they’re born.

She left no rope, no cage, no nail,

just shadows folded under wings.

I walked into the hallway’s mouth

to hear a single echoed string.

Some mornings take a different shape,

a wristwatch ticking in the trees,

a flame that speaks in borrowed words,

a bed unmade in seven keys.

A coffee swells in waxy skin
The city squints through windowed glare
She’s creased inside a wrinkled dress
Her shape hangs limp in laundered air

A payphone rang, one ghost, one ring.
No one moved. We all just knew.
A siren dragged its echo past,
delivering a distant queue.

Fluorescent hums a migraned god.
My coat spins slow behind the glass,
zipper beats like trapped bird wing.
A sock grins dumb from wire racks.

This street is lined with yellow stain,
lights too bright for folks this small.
I sipped, I burned, I thought her name,
it drifted in suburban sprawl.

She’s someone else’s Sunday now
in fresh-washed light, her hair tucked neat.
Vanilla steam and honeyed bread
laughing soft in kitchen's heat.

The dryer stops. A broken chime.
Just silence, stretching like a neck.
I crack, not loud. Just wide enough
to feel the break beneath my breath.

Here my soles are worn too thin
A half-full cup, a sleepless eye,
no grace, no hand to lift away,
this curb, this ache, this grayer sky.

You pull me through doorways
with cherry red charm.
You fill me with whiskey
and hang on my arm.

We waltz through the wreckage,
the crown and her guest.
Your hem lined with ashes,
the last of what’s left.

The clerk asks for blood.
The stone has run dry.
We promise, tomorrow
and feed him with wine.

The clouds now move faster,
with voice of hard wind.
It speaks to you only
as thunder moves in.

You twist here beside me
and curl like a vine,
your teeth in my shoulder,
reliving some crime.

You hold me so tightly
and whisper your vows.
Your secrets stay hidden.
Your tears are so loud.