The wind brushes her hair from her pale cheek
He glances her way.
It's cold out now but she brings her fingers to her wrists and
Slowly,
Carefully,
Pulls up her sleeves.

He turns away from her
And resumes his duties
Of making sure no
Emotions escape from his world.

She reveals all of the love and loss
On her arms
In the form of
Tattoos
And
Bruises
And
Scars.

Words he wrote.
Things he whispered in her ears late at night
When he thought she was sleeping.
She wasn't sleeping.
Not since that first
"I love you"
Left his lips.

It slipped past his chain link fences
And broke through his bolted doors
That he locked around
His heart
And
His hands.
"Don't let me touch her."
He tells himself
"Don't do it,
That'll be the end."

She glances at him now,
Eyes glassy,
Arms naked,
And makes her way over
To rest by his side.

He offers a polite smile
A visible form of
"Hello, goodbye."
She doesn't take it.
Not this time.

He pulls his cuffed hands closer to him
As she places her fingers
On his temples,
And now moves them downward
To his cheeks,
Now his jaw,
Now his mouth.

And as they lock eyes
Every other thing unlocks
And they fall to the ground
In a crash.

The sound of letting go
Wakes them up from their dream land
And they find themselves
Next to one another
Once again.

By the side of her coffin
As she's slowly lowered under
The ground where she stood
When the wind brushed her hair
From her pale
Dead
Cheek.

I should be in politics, I'd tell a buncha lies
I'd lie my *** right off, I'd win the Nobel Prize
-
I'll count the votes before you vote, so I'm sure I'll win
All my campaign promises, forget they'd ever been
-
As soon as I'm in office, my cronies I'll shoe in
I'll ban all graft and greed, except for me and all my kin

“If you can find the problem in your life,
Then you can cut it out.”
But what if my problem is me?
What if everything that I'm trying to run away from
Is myself?
What can I do?
I can't escape it no matter how hard I try.
I can't cut out myself
Because my problem has consumed me
It is me.

Shut off the sky if I ask you to-
grab my world so brassy boring
between its battles and its courage.
I’ll arrive with cold hands and you
can bring the ghosts.

I smell dirt in the day and undo
things as I roam.
I don’t listen when logic roars,
but let it loosen in the sun
and sing my prayers through its marrow
like I’m blowing glass,
like I’m hatching galaxies.
June can wait a bit,
verses still spin sad
where you used
your knees on the good nights.

I tried the dancing.
I tried bleaching the blackened veins
and rusting ribs that held me together
with a smile brighter and stiffer than ever before.
It took a mirror and a shiner to remind me that was pointless.

Before was fumes.
Before was whiplash.
Before was my chattering teeth learning to limber over the back fence then dive into the novels
of your hands.

Before knew my night skin was something to flee and
that all betrayal
starts with moonlight,
isn’t that right?
Before knew that travelers
and wanderers
were taught to survey treetops and look to their shins,
but now I just jump.

You said you’d return with a body that wasn’t mine.
It’s okay if you lied.
I’ve tried to swallow the world between sheets
with a thawing mouth and sinking hips.
I’ve tried to whittle the scenery down to bad habits
and foxes tucked into the hills,
Illuminated just when you thought they were gone.
I’ve found a geography where our jokes are meaningless,
where our hearts are no longer the same,
and it is too gorgeous for words.
Thank you for allowing it.
Thank you for avoiding it.

…

Life is funny in all honesty

Human interactions always astonished me,
the simple capability of being able to allow individuals
to share each other’s thoughts is amazing.
Our very image can be viewed differently by a matter of words.
You can feel the most endearing warmth from simple contact alone,
in many cases, only if it’s the right one.
In others’ cases, it could be the touch of anyone
that reminds you, you are not alone.
I swear I’m in my zone,
writing is a constant love I just can’t leave her alone
So many love letters trapped within my phone.
Lay it all over your skin,
each letter a kin to the grand production
Thank you for your patience,
because it’s given life to works of art
that I could not have foreseen before but now I embrace it.
My heart races whenever my body remembers the sensation.
I mean contemplate it,
my pen bleeds to breathe life into a new creation.

Alleviation of the troubled mind,
trying to adopt and grow with time
and this forever evolving world
I have to let my faith grab the reigns
and overpower any fear that will breed doubts into my mind.
Positivity my only energy,
even when I’m low,
I throw myself into bodies of work like this to get high.
Don’t ask me why,
but often I look at the sky
and believe that even I can surpass the limits.