it's takes two to be a stranger
but you are cold enough for us both

fire and brimstone
and a grotesque attempt
at spontaneous combustion,
words crawling out of throats
and
hands, trembling
and
body, trembling, all over
and
sheer force of memory
splitting through rationality
until a bomb deteroriates
everything we used to
love,
including myself.

I am empty
I said
In not so many words
The veiled confessions dripping off his ears like candle wax
As the wick burns down
Filling the room with a palpable smokiness
That only I can sense

I am choking
I am crawling
I can feel my light fading

For I am a teacup
Sitting on a shelf
Dusty but decorated
My handle pointed towards the wall
Breakable
And uninspired

How I long to be filled with more than emptiness
To have him pour all of his being into my heart and mind
To have him look into my eyes and see more than himself
But each confession only serves to deepen the loneliness
As a search for a soul to listen through the words

flatten your tongue
slip it between your teeth

n.

your little lips
forming an elipsis

o.

put them together
and may you declare
a word you’d so carefully deny—
no.

you spell it out
on table tops
shout it
from the rooftops

and when cursed hands
seek to defile your shrine
may you exclaim
"i am mine"

the whoopsidaisies in life
grow the most vibrant flowers
in your garden of wisdom
and i promise their arrival
will keep you safe

sometimes i realize
i am more than what i present myself as

a deeper wealth of validity
in a fragile shell of human

of femaleness tempered by
the male gaze that beats down on us all

and i more than know
i feel.

there is intensity here, underlying
fully and richly divine

in comparison to regularity
i am more than a name, a face, a soul

yet what is it that causes yearning

that brings sweetness in the heat
of desiring more than what i have

what is it that leads me up
out of the valley of my life and into possibility?

whispers on tongues, promises of more than
what i aspire to be

and within it all i acquire
and learn and continue to yearn