Superimposing
My soul onto another's --
It's not ***; it's love.

Fractured moons are stars
Betwixt a black    black        black sky.
Flutters: small, broken.

Drifting attention
Span against the white wide wall.
Like the clouds, it goes.

It is three a.m..
My eyes chanced to open
And across my bed, outside my window,
From this side of the horseshoe hotel,
Were lights cascading onto
The facade of the inner outside hotel wall.

Were the red; white; green; yellow; blue; white lights a sign
That the aliens were here? -- probing
This particular hotel for their next cornfield victim.

I did not rise to check outside
For fear they would take me next,
And turn me into a probéd husk.

Is this what happens when we sleep?

Together, we woke up
In our secondhand metal bed.
Fell asleep together,
Wrapped up in our ash gray sheets.
My piano hands held yours as we slept.
I had this addiction to living our three years of pain,
Where we were at our best, our most ecstatic,
Our hands grasping tightly at the other’s
And becoming strangled and clammy.
We could have fought through anything.
We fought through our first trip to New York City,
When we came back to our home,
Our shiny, chrome bed was there – ready to carry us in our sleep.

After you moved out, I looked for the polaroids we took.
They were hidden beneath the mattress
Which has been stained a dull red
Because of the rusting on the metal of the springs.
I didn’t look at them, though I wanted to.
I imagined that the photographs, too, have rusted.
Lying down on the chilled bed-
Devoid of the warmth of two lovers,
The cold air circulated around me, slowing the opening and closing of my hands.
And it filled up the stagnant vacancy in them.
I grabbed the edge of the bed and
The rust scales flaked off onto my hand.
I wiped it off on the mattress,
And wondered how much redder this bed could get.

A cradle of flame enveloped the bed.
I ripped up the floorboards-
Scratched with your nail marks and dented from our play fighting.
The blood from where I hit my head staining the wood,
Matching the boards to the red scales on the frame.
I boarded up the door,
Trapping the remnants of a bonfire bed.
As the crackling of the burning bed quelled, I pried the ashen nails off the shielded door.
I lied down on the ash-metal frame, pretending we’re still there-
And I started dreaming.
Images appear of you and I, sitting crossed legged on a queen-sized mattress-
Holding hands-
And a polished metal frame,
Lined with astral sheets and a hand-made quilt with our initials patched into the top-left corner,
Discussing the plans we made together,
Of how you’ll travel and see the world,
Maybe Dubai, Amsterdam, anywhere but here, really.
And how I would wait here.

My wishful eyes open across from what should have been yours.
But all I see is the emptiness in my piano hand.

A windy writer's
pen scratches on mute paper
yielding black branches.

Standing across the table (there were no chairs in the house) was my father, Emilo. The table itself was a sturdy rosewood, and one of the last items in the home. We had sold our belongings after mother had died -- my father said it was to help pay for school. We had each kept one tattered shirt and one nice shirt which I would wear to class every other day (we were shirtless in this moment, no need to sweat in clothes unnecessarily). We had one pair of jeans each - both tattered and mended with old quilts taken from the tailor's trash can. We also kept three of mom's blouses - one for me, one for father, and one for her. We were close to pawning hers, though. On the table, near my father (and, away from me) was my semester's grades and a polished bottle of amber liquor. His skinny arm swung across the table, smashing the bottle of gasoline-smelling alcohol against the bareness of the dry, wood wall. The liquid seeped into the pores of that portion of our home leaving a dripping stain. It never really dried. Two weeks and three days later, my father would flick the ashy edge of a cigarette **** into the wall. He was too drunk to know he wasn't in Hell.