you taught me to peel my own layers
like oranges, abolishing my own comfort until my skin is raw and fresh, until the scent of selfish solitude is in the air you breathe.

once bare, I must forget the ache
of loss and grieve in silence as the desert sun taunts me with
the color I've just shed.

my eyes will always know your face.
it is a face of a man with yellow eyes,
a gun inside his pocket;
ready to pull the trigger once the war inside him commences.

gone are the days of peeling oranges.
it is time for me to peel suns.

The only love I've ever known are
the scars on my mother's back,
painted in the colors of nightfall and
dawn, breaking into an immortal blue.

I can only imagine seeing the world
through her worn eyes;
coming home to a pair of ***** hands
and two mouths to feed,
falling asleep to what sounded like forgiveness.

And so when you offered your bare shoulders to me,
I learned how to love like a blind man—
my hands stretching out into the dark horizon beyond my lids, fingers clawing
their way out of the black and into the blue.

This is an apology.

For the nights you grasped my wrists
as I tried to paint you in colors you did
not need, for the times my fists fought
their way into your chest because
I only saw you in black and white,
for burying our hands in soil,
for feeding you words until your throat
was filled with the consequences of my inabilities,
for not belonging to you,
for not belonging to me.

Sometimes my body fails to remember
that my feet are my own
and that the ocean is going to be fine without my surrender
and that you do not need to break to touch me
and that i am my mother's daughter
but i am not her clone.

I am thinking of sitting in front of a broken window and wishing the sun away. The light has left selfish marks on my skin and they meet each other despite my malevolence. I was never one to grow out of my fatalities.

Often, I lie awake in a bed that feels
foreign enough to be called home and
feel the dark circles under my eyes
spread out until my hands arise to gather the dark night in my palms and
squeeze the silver out of a black ball.

The talons are reaching out for my chest, aching just to graze the abnormality under my dark blue skin. I am a wilting white rose in a field of sunflowers and they are all waiting for the last petal to fall.

My travels always start with a cup of you,
soaked in the sighs of the morning rain, treading water in the lake of our sheets.

Sometimes they end with you behind the door,
the words crawling out of your mouth—
a thunderstorm of
unwritten paragraphs about how often my head and knees meet.

Sometimes they end with a bottle and a stick of defeated silence—
you and your fallacious fingers,
you and your absolute mouth,
you, you, you.

Most times they end with the moon wrapped in our helpless embrace,
its light a different flavor.

And even then, I do not choose to let go.

i.
The streets are empty, love.
I can almost find myself between alleys, searching for your hand amidst all this hell.
The lights have exploded and I am wondering how good it must feel to burn out.
My chest still has claw marks.
Do you remember?
Do you remember?

ii.
The air is still, baby.
I can almost drown without you in it.
Your words are all I hear
as I scratch at my lungs in the darkness.

iii.
My tongue is dry, sweetheart.
I can almost taste you.
The ropes are tight and snakes are around my ankles,
I can't shake them off.

iv.
The dark is strangling me, honey.
I'm almost there
It wants me,
it wants me
I don't know if my eyes are closed
or open
I am burning out
I am still searching.

the walls are tight around you
blameless, insufficient

the inside is a storm of all sorts,
cold and quivering with oblivious benevolence

the outside is warm
and yet my arms itch to curl around
the blameless insufficiency that is so desperately engraved on your skin

Do not make me love you,
the smell of your skin on mine in the dark
or the courage of your words

I do not bloom in the spring
nor do I find my feet buried deep in the ocean during the summer

My hands have cracked from last winter's cold
And not even you—a boy with eyes of fire—can warm them

Six minutes into midnight
and you're already fighting for dominance
The sheets aren't as clean and
the breeze whispers the words I can't

The proximity of our chests and
how far you've come is still unmistakably balanced
The soft hiss of your breath still resembles muffled screams—
noises beneath the stillness of your lungs

Six minutes into midnight
and there are untouched mountains outside our window.

I'm telling you, boy;
do not mistake my bruises
for beauty.

Do not tell me that you're a man
for taking the crooked path that led you to a wounded soul searching for salt.

I am not a hero for you to admire.
I am not a victim for you to save.
I am not searching for a rope or a blade or a pill.

And your eyes are curious but that is all they are.

Here you are,
with cold feet and
fingertips pressed tight
against cracked skin—
an archaic mantle for a budding soul

Beautiful is not what I call it,
the frost in your eyes—
black tongues underneath
layers of blue flames

It is vicious and delicate,
electric and fickle—
the flavor of rain
on the moisture of your lips
and the trace of summer
along the curve of your neck

Beautiful is not what I call it,
for there is no word to capture
the ease in the pain
and the ecstasy in the anger
when the sun and moon rise
in the same sky

He's never been one
to collect snowflakes
with his tongue—
says that they melt anyway

And yet, he's always been one
to fold his hands
inside a radiant flame—
says that he'll burn out anyway

When I was five,

things went by fast

like the cursory glances I took

at the buildings and houses outside the window of an expeditious vehicle

And candles were left burning

in and out of the dark

When I was eleven,

things sped up a little more

and I was no longer looking at the world outside my window

but at the small droplets of water impatiently rolling down the sleek glass

And mirrors were objects that I held in my hand,
and stood in front of that contained another world – another me

Now that I’m marked with time

and the depth of the ocean is imprinted right across my heart,

my window is archaic and irrelevant, consumed in dust and moist

For my eyes do not see through them anymore

I am standing outside of it

And the candles are blown out

even in the dark confines of my bathroom

Because the mirrors are not another world, not another me

but a reminder of the battles I failed to overcome,

a reflection of a body that I must look away from,

a question that painfully burned itself into my mind

if pain is measured by a wrist
or a scratch
or a bruise
or a gun underneath your pillow,
then you are the epitome of it

and if happiness is measured by a smile
against the pressure in your bones
and the marks on your skin
and the cigarette flames that illuminate your face,
then you are the beauty of it

In words, we are lost
in a sea of miscalculated probabilities
and frozen moments in time

In gestures, we are lingering
behind a string of unspoken words
and inarticulate pain

But in love, we are roaming
in between dimensions of mellifluous,
infinite encounters,
seeking for that unwavering consistency of bliss,
and finding it

He is the feeling
that creeps up my spine
and chokes it
just tight enough
that I feel it
in my veins
in my heart
and my brain

He is the sound of
birds in the summer
and the smell of
grass after
a thunderstorm,
the gun of a soldier
and the person it's pointed at

I am just a passerby
a wallflower
a pair of brown eyes
and a safe distance away

And I see how much it hurts
and I understand the lust
for the silence
in the chaos that is in him

But I am merely
human
and I am not a hero
I am just - and always will be -
a passerby

Tie my heart to an anchor and
Drop it into the sea
Blow bubbles into my lungs
And just let them be

Do not pull me apart and fix me
Do not even try
Just leave my veins tangled
Let me bleed -- watch me die

Because you cannot fight
When there is no more war
You cannot run
Without running too far

Tie my heart to an anchor and
Throw it into the sea
Blow bubbles into my lungs
And
     Do
         Not
             Resuscitate
                 **Me