why doesn't the wind from the swings give enough momentum for us to pick up our feet or
teach us the difference between anger and fear?

my face is always in the dirt, like a colorblind politician or like some self-loathing gardener with no sun-screen.  i bleed daily to ensure i will not bite off more than i can stuff into my pockets while brothers and sisters can't make eye contact and the astrophysicists are left to the shelters.

my eyeballs have poured out onto the cutting board like broken faucets and we rubberneck but
who's actually here to see the show?

when I close my eyes,  there are deaf ears.
I see nothing,
my friends.

i have not asked for this agony-
waking up and
filling my nervous system with consciousness,
a sugar-coated term for fear.

and we see enough.

there are good dogs who bite out of spite,
from being curb-stomped and
laughed-at
and killed,
and then there dogs that will just bite.

the ability to perceive is the equivalent of watching you and anyone you've ever ****** on the bed that we never made.

none of us have asked for this,

but we have it.

Endings could be happier if we didn't spread the impression that death was to be avoided at all costs.

i.
pictures hung so abundantly like there was a ponytail for every assorted alcoholic beverage that would go down while you sat on the counter top with grey in your eyes
or on my lap like lavender gloves. i bought flour and red velvet as atonement, but hollow words are as indicative of unfaithfulness as your eyelashes were indicative of my heartbeat speeding up like your raggedy red Taurus on the Pike and slowing down like our souls in self-reflection, co-morbidly.

ii.
i clip to cold like frozen gnomes but the room with fire was bellowing through the chimney in your irises. it was the ceiling i was the most comfortable collapsing under. Merlot, you are a peach and almost all of the sun that our brains can ultravioletly receive. There is no where to run to when logs and THC are crackling while you let my try on your scarves and you rub my arm horizontally like there was no famine or *** trafficking in the world. The rabbit is always right and Dewey loved the hay and telling us that we belong together. there was no time to guess the right combination of psych meds and there was certainly no one there to close the sliding glass door.

we'd unzip and kiss in a mist of dampened television volume while everyone was asleep. i fell into you, first in billions of separate-cardboard puzzle pieces and then all at once like oblivion within a climate-controlled stadium.


iii.
i noted the same pictures in this room and how your ponytails ended all existing threats to human suffering.

iv.
i loved the dark and the stars and the soupy-vacuum, pulling us in and spitting us out like a bitter mango.
there was never any water in your pool to turn green and so the unfilled concrete was an ocean to our symmetrical lawn-chair thrones, radiating green jeans and the hazel-stained dream-scene.

we lost what vision was real and what was a dream. this was a gift beyond any explanation or expectation. yet, you wouldn't let me remove all of the shrapnel and funnel antibiotics with my barren fingertips onto your scalp.

v.
here, there was kin-
the only room in which your skin didn't show me a piece of you,
but your words did.
there's a way that all of our lives collide like a supernova and our explosion felt more like a hundred-decade erosion,
giving and taking from each other like a sea-side boulder and the tide.


vi.**
you finally showed me the flesh you were ashamed to show the couch, your bed for two in Easthampton, mac & cheese without almond milk, the top of Wachusett, the pit of a pizza dish, the sink of the swooning stitches, the empty pool, the movie theater, your fake bras, and
everything else that supported us like an apparition that wouldn't return my favorite t-shirts.

and i was in.

my fingernails were there. every hair i touched while panic deducted consciousness in some scarce granting of a wish was another prarie for me to grow corn and flowers and ecstasy within. every single crop died but i never forget how self-loathing turned into a comforting sleep. we ran from consciousness like a runaway train but you were always on my back, whispering that solidarity was a the solution to a world that values prosperity over pragmatic humanity.

all the tears and dreams that danced like the branches in the frigid, unforgiving winter were dried up like a creek that i lost consciousness in when you shut the door.

these spaces exist in purgatory because i don't remember my dreams anymore and nothing really ever means anything,
like biting off my fingers in all of these rooms that are left with only memories of you.

i wish that someday i'll be a shelf full of items that can't be replaced and not just a dresser full of perfectly good socks that have never been worn.

there exists validation in shoulders to rest on, but there's muscle there that i just never wanted to work for, and i think that's why winter binds me like a vice.

i didn't ask for any of the plants or pretty girls but i am enjoying my time away from the sauna and the microscope accordingly.

why does your ghost weaken me when I don't even believe in it? why do I ache more after Klonopin and ice packs than before? how would any answer you avoided, articulating blank space and bleak dreams, unspoken, yet, aware of the ephemeral life span of the sun and every tear and bruise from genocides all the way to flirt-induced nudges, help our sinking ship fly? there's so much pain that our brains could flip on their backs, take a picture, and lose the ability to sort out the original prints from what may actually matter.

you saw everything, and then me, and then everything again. you're climbing trees that I wished you would have pushed me out of. you're shooting rifles that i wish most people would shoot me with, the rifles you jammed with a cork but now **** with enough force to cause ripples that hit the little broken bones inside of my chest.

for awhile, i think i forgot about bullets. whatever you feared brought me back to this bed and now the sunflowers in my eyes are metal, cold and lost. i'm still trying to chew them, but it is so ******* painful that my vertebrae can't stand each others' company.

i'm so far off of the third rail i think that some electricity might do my head some good.
i am a blind lamp post.
i am a diving board made of bricks.
i am gum, chewed.
i am waiting for an eighteen-wheeler in a train station,
wishing velocities could combine to hit me
as hard as you did.

sunrises and roosters have shown us beginnings since we were taught to walk and to be efficient,
but no one showed me how to gravitate away from darkness when soft skin swallows me whole and spits me out as truth in a poorly designed disguise
through molars,
through holes and
passion that I feel with every aching pain I'm told isn't actually real.

blood is real and bruises can't be healed with gauze and work ethic.
we're doors and we don't have hinges. we are not stones, even when ******, we are capable of productivity and love and forward progress.

the solution to over-depletion and unheard screaming was to erode together, but now i'm sprinting back and forth between pecuniary poles and pockets with energy that sunrises or roosters have never given me;

we've fallen short of grace-
is this a choice?
do the sounds under our skin that emulate doors,
pieces of dense wood,
being the victims of vigorous passive vindication,
cry out of
desire
or
necessity?

no one answers.
no one can-
no one.

to suggest such a static solution simplifies abundance and ignorance and when screen doors remain idle,
leaving holes for wasps, spiders, and
beating
hearts
to emulate chromatic symmetry between pasta,
soft noodles,
and softer irises;
of bed sheets and donated couches of past lovers-

to flood apartment doors and grated gates without mercy.

the paradox lies within the absence of sound when we knock on screen doors and no one can ever hear, not even
ourselves.

there are always victories in splitting threads and in being swallowed whole.

dark, warm,
blind,
reborn.

ONE plane ride, ONE bag of disguise, and ONE ocean more blue than the last,
do we deny our hues and fly, sit and swallow the sky, or
fall into dreams?

stay on the path of blue and fight for what is true because none of us have any ******* clue what lies on the other side of that pill.

sweaters WILL unravel.
there will always be another forest to explore,
imploring denial of bark, branches, bereavement;
leaves will only leave when they want to leave,
never because anyone else says so.

Shamans say that the eagle eating me in my dreams represents a readiness to plant seeds-
our forests will never touch the same ocean again,
but they will both grow in sweet sleet,
in sunshine,
in love,
in hate,
in promises broken and kept,
in love,
in love,

we're lead claiming to be paint.

i never had the right.
i never saw black as all of the colors at once,
or as the absence of any,
i just allowed retinas to dance and be still without ever taking any of it in.

monochrome rhymes with monotone but no apartment or pasture has ever been warm enough to call home,
at least for hollow bones and eyes constantly shifting from a gregarious green to a more genuine grey.

no one ever hears the crickets, even when the floodgates are open or we're searching for that perfect shade to transform the canvas.

you were a monkey with a paint brush,
a brief rush of lust disguised as beauty and anything else that retinas could convince themselves to be mindful of.

chipping paint on the garage will remain and any lungs in proximity will continue to breathe in the dead crickets.

i don't have the right and we'll never get it right.

everything is always out of focus, and the lens won't adjust.

i can't ever see lightning or romance. hell, i can't even see the top of the world when i'm comfortably on its shoulders and all i want to do is help bear some of the weight.

my bones have never known a shortage of blankets,
just anguish over idly watching the thermostat push the tea kettle to a breaking point where all it can do is scream.

glasses can't fix this.

there are so many knives in my skin that I swear I might be sick.

I am not sick.

I am human.

I can't trust water by it's state of matter. Just because it can go down doesn't mean it's easy to swallow. If it echoes, then it's at least partially hollow. Don't try to start a conversation after everything when you still echo through canyons and mountain ranges.

All of the flames are far too warm to touch, but I need the light to see and to be okay.

------

*ignore my ugly and come back to me

summer is for holding hands, not smacking skin that's already excessively bruised with metallic rubber bands.

they don't help me shake off the nausea when I look in the mirror when a page becomes an ocean and a kiss hurdles over death to help keep the torch from giving up, from bleeding out and from gasping oxygen one last time and then realizing there's nothing left in the tank.

the woman behind the mirror can see me; we operated on such dependency that I couldn't even see you on days where I needed you the most. i never felt her hand meet my hand, certainly not with desire, at least. i try to hide my scars in discretion, like on the inside of my cheek just past where my top lip meets my bottom lip on both sides, and behind my knees where the tendons connect the big bones.

but when hide and seek was the game, you didn't ever even care to look in the obvious places, like behind the curtains where my ***** white socks were visible from rooms away.

the inside of your cheeks are so beautiful: i think they always will be for as long as we co-exist with the stars that created us. i hardly ever dream, but when i do, i'm singing to you in every pitch i possibly can about our static buzzes, gravity reversals, funeral rehearsals, and only temperature change that scientists can't agree on, which seems to always correlate with my entrance or departure into all the rooms in which I could breathe the same air as you.

empathy should be a plateau to rest on, not a mountain to climb, and so the winter is warmer and the days are shorter.

i'm not holding hands with anyone until I can take back the canvas that you laminated my fingerprints on to when you ripped them away from me without ever asking to do so.

i'm unmedicated,
but when you fell asleep between your glass of Merlot and the outside of my left leg,
I was sedated.

my bones never enjoyed saturation, or even understood how someone else could experience something similar; they just reflect raindrops like a two-way window pane.

now, it all hits me in brief, powerful bursts like a short-range shotgun blast and in long waves like electroconvulsive therapy that gives you painful memories instead of making them go away.

i hadn't felt anything in years but even brick walls have soft spots. Even spiders can abandon webs and become kings.* Even someone so full of nothing could feel like the new year wouldn't bring more pills and that love could fly without restricted access areas or delays due to what they claim is the weather but is really pain being drained in the wrong sink, one either too puke-stained or too leaky.

i finally realized that color television was a worthy investment. I can recognize how much brighter black and white seemed when you gave me what I perceived to be the inside of your arteries: red, black and blue humming along at a pace that felt synonymous with what I perceived to be equilibrium.

i am no longer sedated

i remember how those jeans looked when you put them on one pant leg at a time, and then when both flickered glimmers of future false hope and came together, met with a zipper. you always told me that the mirror was a lot less friendly than reality, but now I'm not so sure that the reflection was an inaccurate piece of diction regarding the color you drain from the world, first in wavelengths smaller than your pinky toe, and then all at once, like a vacuum.

the skies have smiled and cried and wiped up old tears and crusted snot since you left. it seems like i've brought every single ******* cloud to this piece of paper, rain or shine. it's trite, it's boring, but it's the only sick and sad way of coping with losing every drop of precipitation that changed the dry cracks in the ground into sunflowers. i never cared if they were yellow or pink or black and white. they were real.

it's time to accept that cracked concrete is still concrete and can still grow flowers, even if they are black dahlias or dandelions that the people in my life that have told me that i'll never be good enough deem to just be common weeds. you can't drain my life anymore by draining the color from it. your presence is everywhere, but your presence is gone. i've had enough of fighting the validity of this doubt. i've had enough of enclosing the zipper from the hazel-stained, green dream scene on my lips to mute myself.

we survive by love, and today, there is so much love for every memory i've ever made. your departure is not my self worth. my departure with those who cared enough to stitch up my infected knees is my self worth. sitting in your Grand Prix before Elm talking about potential and wiping the blood off of blades. listening to Parachutes and smoking enough to forget everyone who ever hurt us. sunshine and werewolves. elevators and Aderall. Canada and Virginia. stone walls, long-distance calls, salvia that looked like fudge, dehydration in Williamsburg, the screen porch at Meadow, and choosing not to print out my suicide notes.

today we evolve because you do not define my evolution anymore. today we evolve because i have a voice that deserves to be heard. we all have stories that deserve to be heard. today we evolve because love will always be the stitches that any of our knees will require, infection or not. we will blossom, in darkness and in light, in color and in absence, in faith and in fear.

no matter how deep the planet decides to cave in, our hands will always be there to help pull you out.

and i'll never need you for me to be absolutely certain of that
ever again
.

your cave was a pasture-
far beyond rugs made of the softest fabric skin could feel,
far along field of comfort resting in my arms.
oxygen just never seemed to make sense,
in scarcity.
stairs were just never worth the effort,
labor always coinciding with
disparity
and
nothing was ever clear.
you were as clear as the looking glass we have either all seen or will see when reality becomes as transparent as our minds wish it not to be,
so that we can wish it to be so.

I hope what I see is a dream where I can be
me,
wearing all of my skin, including
shards that you
took.

Wise women and men who have written books have always told me to focus on the light pouring from stars that kindle constellations,
but my eyes refuse to ignore every single bottle cap from the thousands of beer cans I've torn off out of a fear that I'll always scratch the backs of those who need it and that no one will ever return the favor.

My hurricanes will make no difference if the forest has already burned to the ground,
but moving my eyes upward into a sea of stars has been dulled by a neck brace that you embraced boldly when you broke every jar in the cabinet and didn't even think about helping me clean up this mess that turned my dreams into a reality where I wanted to learn from those that have read books and affixed my eyes to the constellations you gave me right here on Earth.

One day,
the thousands of metallic memorabilia reminding me of every hair I ripped out of my head over shattered glass will transform into seeds that will fertilize a field and yield a forest that anyone who ever needs tree for shelter can fall asleep within and dream about love without strings attached or knives in their backs.

I've removed your blade and recycled it,
transforming the blood from my spine into the stars that hold hands with all of the other bright lights composed of the pain that has defined your lives and then helped you shine in a constellation full of flowers blooming from fractured hearts.

We will watch from the treetops,
together.

indigo and other new colors
are darker than scars to me,
but scars are not martyrs.

"I do not know.
I am sorry"."

I AM SORRY
THAT

while cold amplifies the ardent aura of
authentic hearts,
reflections aren't always viewed in light,
and retrospect fails to open the front door
to all of the curls in your hair that you never
straightened.

Nature is a force that beckons us to reconsider our northern destinations-
southbound state of minds deny
that suns are only one color.

Suns and hearts are
indigo scars
of past lives,
reminding me
of why I refuse to see
color in irises.

a
silver-lined,
acute and astute
reflection
tells me that the
veins in my forehead will never replace
everything you've exhaled
to deserve a place to
rest your bones.

The cloud you sleep on
will never return,
but every drop that has pierced my skull
stays to sting,
singing sharply,
so that I may see color
once again.

--

a month is passing
while your tongue is losing grace.

When you stand in a cornfield,
you cannot see your sisters,
who lie on the other side,
enjoying the butter
and smiling.

Time is passing,
and closing my eyelids
does not erase your faces.

I haven't had enough to eat today,
or in weeks.

Keep looking,
keep tasting.

A month has passed.

While your faces lose grace,
I will tear the stitches
off of the straitjacket
you threw on the back porch.

--

I love you.
I am better off without you

.

You will
neutralize.

You will
(              )
what I
am running
from.

Please,
for the sake
of


life


(            ),

leave.

Please,
give me
equilibrium.

()


(    )

I do not need anyone
to complete me.

l(y)i(e)ng,
providing,
and comp-
romising (together).

It is a sweet scent of a drive with no windows.
It is a hint of the things you wish you could accurately reminisce without putting clouds over the whole scene, even where there was shade and everyone was comfortable.
It puts every thunderstorm into a purse and throws it across the room and further away from hearts because what else lies in that purse is nothing in comparison to the soul that bears it.

When you lose it,
it is a nosebleed
that cannot ever stop
pouring.

the picture is falling so far down that I lost track the last time I had any chance of grasping it. How long does it take for a fist to form? how long can the drop be after all? it doesn't seem that bad. but its so warm up here, its so cozy and jagged and I seem like I love it. everyone else does, except for those who cared. The funny thing is, no one cares. No cares if I go to class or if I smile or if I finally jumped. we would all just continue on driving and laughing like there was somewhere to drive to. Sometimes I think about those days when they shoved snow in my face and I remembered wondering when it was going to get better. everyone always said it was going to be better. Now I'd do anything to get frostbite on every limb. I'd tear myself piece from piece if I realized what life was going to be.

I recently looked at a blank white page with the word "information" written on it.  It made perfect sense to me.

I never had enough time to
open myself and dance with you,
nor could I make dahlias and sunflowers shimmer in the reflection of the light
while you danced in circles
without me.

--

I can't wait to see what 22 has in store for you.

--

I just don't want you to think that I'm ready for anything.

Words and green jeans of
the hazel-stained dream scene
showed me a passion for humanity,
but love is just warped titanium,
and minimizes intimacy for polyandry.

You told me this was not your plan,
but
you drank and
drank
and you grabbed me inside out, knuckles tied to insecurities so tightly that bruises turned black and blue into a hue of comfort and confidence and everything that I needed.

You were the answer. You were my anchor. You were the alternative to the smoking gun and everything that I've lost a drive to attend to over the years.

I will always remember the smell of smoke,
your sweaters forged from low-hanging clouds,
and the seemingly fully-shadowed tunnels in my organs that you accessed and lit up like a sun longing to burn forever.

on another hand,
with my shoulders squared,
winter will not freeze my spirit
enough where I will believe in you.

My favorite outfit
was when your heart laid restless on your sleeve-
a paper mache
of a dream I desperately

DIED

to achieve.

Our senses merged in snow,
and before light,
we were buried-
shrouded by a part of you that
had
died.

Every sound you echoed
made marrow leak lazily to
a concrete road constricted
ambiguously,
with hazel
and green,
and the blackest
******* BLACK
that my marrow will ever manifest.

--

Wear your heart on your sleeve.
Without love,
death is the only achievement to achieve.

The seasons are finally changing,
and while I didn't expect your heart
to escape,
you fled,
just like you said you would.

Just like I knew you should.

I act like you had a choice;
there was never a word self-spoken
where my loathing manifested itself
as an audible voice.

Rejoice in free will
and affinity
and freedom of choice.

You forced winter to thrive,
but I hate you for thoughts
and an urge
and emotions
where self-hates and reality merge.

You forced winter to thrive,
but where green should arrive,
I am unheard.

You are blooming,
and I am unheard.

when the cold leaves,
I expect you to return,
but why have you ripped the hood off of your jacket?
Why have you put frostbite in a bucket under the kitchen sink?
You know that I'll never look because mirrors don't erode.
Mirrors explode.

I know I've never seen a true reflection,
and crutches are only temporary.
but the bloom of an iris or two
or the chemicals behind your fingertips on my scalp
or that drugs that made us feel slightly north of worthless
meant more to me than
mountaintops mean to mountains.

Or than nothing meant to you.

Hypocrisy is worse than
when the seasons take too long to change or
when butane and razorblades
can't scar deep enough.

My bones tell me
that I am a magnet to nothing,
too.
I know that apathy seeps into my veins while I sleep
just like you.

I know that skin only peels off if you want skin to peel.

I know that days where the sun illuminates my bedsheets through the blinds will only heal if I can eliminate hindsight and look into the light with enough intent to illuminate, not to blind.

I know that I am trying.

What hurts the most
is that you are capable,
but with instability, my love,
our love can never be stable.

The joy you provided me
transports me to
floating fossils,
swollen tonsils,
and hearing aids
that kept you within an ear's length.

I remember water;
I remember the way that making blood colder
was an antidote to growing older.

When you grew old,
I recognized that sandpaper shows
beauty in rigidity,
and even the tough

show fragility.

Taste buds and rewired pathways
helped write the book,
but nothing will ever parallel
the compensation,
softness and
comfort
that sandpaper provided my skin.

The dream sends the signal;
the battery applies the shocks.
Don't rest a weary head on blankets full of rocks,
like a pillowcase full of hard knocks.

It's consciousness;
it's metamorphosis,
but the backflip out of the cocoon
doesn't indicate an exit too soon,
but rather a kick
for bad shtick
on why I hear them
and my chemicals don't match
yours
or

(You think you have it bad?)

I've had a share of troubles
but nothing to compare to
stares or glares
of empty yesterdays
and broken sticks on snares:
I guess your most important thought
is
who the hell cares?

Orb sinks slow while
the numbness of routines exit
and nothing
becomes less
abstract and more of
your hollow, melting core.

This has a moral
This story ends at some point in time,
but I don't have an answer for when.

(You think you have it bad?)

Every story has an ending
and every cracked palm
deserves mending.

_

Wake up,
*you don't have it that bad.

There are cliffs and
there are
ledges.

South of gravity,
cavities release color;
cataracts shade
what is too unconscious
to discover.

DO NOT
(under any circumstances)
fall.

Do not blink,
or allow hearts to accelerate in order
to decompose
like a token;
like a rock
interwoven
with moss and
history.

The bottom-
perhaps the best view.

I bleed, I ache, I pour;
I imbue a morbid yesterday
on your plate for dinner.

I'm late, per usual
(I'm anxious,
yet not worried).

Concrete lines combine
to form
shapes, polygons,
and
anything you want them to be.

I want to help and mend
and repair

but

poison lies where kindness
stops despair.


it goes on.
The routine will sing me
the sweet swallow's song
of my fingerprints,
and of how they
parallel the hearts
of everyone else.

I'm late, per usual.

I won't
believe what
the swallow sings,
nor will I
accept what
life brings

until I've blinked enough
to dissociate.

..

waking up
now reminds me more of
digging up bones,
rather than skipping stones.

water isn't all that I hyped it up to be.

I drove miles and miles just
to discover
that the heat was broken,
and that your affection
is more of an illusion
than an authentic token,
wrapped in ***
and compassion.

Through metal weights
and steel plates,
I make a living.

Through some sort of
endless storm,
I will live

the darkness will ultimately illuminate all of the light and altruism that we have to bring to this world.

--

Concrete
(pause)
cracks,
lights,
DOUBT,
and applause(?).

How do winds take the place of air?
How can love overcome
omnipresent despair?

The record is broken,
but beautiful.

I just want
existence to thrive.

Breathing is affected by
my lack of left-handedness
and
my inability
to experience emotion in any pragmatic method.

Drown me
in the sea
of instability
and broken
dreams.

It's some sort of yearning-
***** of yarn,
stars that burn.

There is a path that never connects me to the center, nor does
the center define
an end goal;
it's something south of overlapping my dreams
of yearning and
knitting and
lighting fire to everything inside my head that tells me every single ******* day that I'm not good enough.

I ignite fires on days where
it is too cold to be
mindful
or be positive
because
I must.

, and so weather patterns are not correlated with (mis)trust because there is collusion.

V. Conlusions:
Any meaningful exclusion will compensate restitution.

Material, though, wears thin as your heart wears my skin like your favorite shadow.

Plants don't operate like this because they have common sense.

I think sometimes the drugs wear off
too early.

Sometimes,
she gives me hope
and sometimes
she gives me enough
coffee to
keep me up for weeks
and miles.
But miles down the road
isn't really what matters yet.

Don't disguise this as
a call, a
morning song
of pain,
or anything
I've thrown away.

This is the same
shovel I'll dig
my own grave with
if you jump down
and play
in the dirt with me.

Don't leave it
to rust.

I'm scared that
I'm picking off
pieces of decaying skin
without anywhere
to
put
them.

One day,
I think my
excuses for
waking up to
stars
turning their heads from me
will run out.

One day,
the last of my flesh
will dissapear and decay
and the night sky
will gain a star
burnt out
before ignition.

what do you receive
when you trace my hand?

are there bones
sharpened by stones,
or
enough cushions
to take
something
poorly sewn
and wipe away skin
revealing doubt
that I'm not
meant for
the word
that I'm in?

is your vision rosily tainted,
or am I worthy of
finite
ink?

i've fallen in love
enough times
to realize that there
are two hands
on the clock.

there are enough paths to travel
where hearts can

intersect

and where they can
separate.

it is never too late
to bring in the freezing
from the cold.

i will not
let storms
erode your bones.

you are but a single spec of dust
and yet you are
every particle that my eyelashes
have ever deflected
out of some
(probably false)
sense of defense
and mistrust.

the contrast
has never broken
the ice sheet that covers
my bones and organs
so sharply,
so warmly,
so comfortably

moving mountains
has become simple
with the oxygen and hope
you generously give me
in each blink
and
velvet
touch.

It's funny how the heart can
eat away at organs like
a starving, rabid dog.

Your corroded liver
and decaying lungs
are contagious under a false pretense,
my dear.

Your skin reveals
the true hue of that
which makes you be.

You bleed nothing
but grace.
You slow nothing
but a perpetually accelerating pace-

and the ability to slow time
is not an abundant quality.

For you, the world is shrouded,
and such a distorted vision
is nothing to relax about;
I want to see the heights of
towering playground equipment
in your eyes.

You deserve nothing less than
all of the water in lakes I have ever seen.

You deserve nothing less
than continents
encapsulating the altruism
of each
fragile,

timeless,

exhalation.

I have heard a heart
drop and a
heart burst,
but I've never quite felt
a contraction
or inflation
as red
or
as full of life
as you.

You are blue
in an ocean
that never knew.

Yellow paints
the sun,
and your hips,
too.

I gather flowers
in valleys,
blooming without
any stems
for you.

Sometimes, there are
dream of days when
trees aren't so hollow.

When I do not wish to live,
how can words leave a mouth
for actions to follow?

I will rot.
I will live
for hypothetical thought.

Nothing is real,
and the rain
will leave me  
to lose bones
and wither away
like a calendar
left to rot
with hypothetical thought
and empty plains spanning
light years
in length.

Just give me it,
******* it.
Give me the strength
for a collapse
spanning light years in length,

I am January.
But you're better than snow.

You have enough light
to right the wrongs
done by the evil men
from a lifeline
to my favorite
spider's web
sewn.

You lack the thickness
to right the wrongs I've
implicitly justified
as a nail to my fragile skin.

I'm heartless.

You are a pin
You may take my kin,
bleed, multiply,
amplify,
and remain.

Take my soul
and leave him
to do nothing
but be.

Tonight the stars have reminding me of hindsight,
of the alternatives to drinking milk and of why I hated myself for so many years and then stopped.

I could never feel so comfortable lying on my back while rabbits and leaves filled my veins with an ecstasy that a past self could never cut or swallow into sedation and then oblivion.

Maybe purgatory still lines the ground that my shoes constantly conflict with, but if you are my nothingness then I have suddenly found everything in absolutely nothing,
or maybe it's in the way that death chooses to hug me whenever I am around you because she has always strangled me with enough force to destroy villages and any spec of a hope that the rope in the tree in the oak tree in my back yard was not my final destination in your absence.

this place is the softest of fabrics that kept me alive when my legs were bleeding out in a cloud where thunder and lightning yelled all of my failures directly into my eardrums while I froze to death and was left to rot.

They mostly leave forests to burn
but
I will pour hurricanes for you.

We are all pieces to this puzzle,
but there are more heartbeats
than there is audible space.

There is no mark on the skin of an outlier-
just a universal instinct to reach higher.

We'll all keep reaching for the right fit.
What happens when realizations
of isolated chairs
and echoless rooms
reach consciousness?

Will we stop reaching,
or blindly ignore truth?

Will we accept broken limbs,
or feign eternal youth?

To float or to sink-
is a truly blind way to think.

Arbitrarily,
there is universal fit
and there is
unison.

I fall,
and I am fleeting.

Here,
there is no escaping.

Clutches
of care and emotion.

I'm terrified of such a notion.

Brown-
there is brightness
in such darkness.

There are hymns
hopefully strung on tombstones.

There
is
light
where
there
is
nothing.

These words are nothing but
bits of string
arranged by
the level of warmth they provide.

Stagnant feelings may divide.
I will smile if she smiles,
and work tirelessly
all the while.

If there's a fight every day,
does any mind exist to stay?

I've been thinking of overgrown vines
and broken stone walls.

The air just doesn't
taste as green anymore

How can anyone deny that?

The urge to connect,
combine,
transform,
touch
and ascend
is not to ever ignore.

The only happiness I know
comes from memories
of vines and stone.

So-
here are my limbs.
And there is the moon.
My only request
is that you don't untangle
the overgrowth
that makes the bond possible.