your bones are traveling your heart is unraveling
and I don't know how to catch your fall

my lips are trembling my fingers are are assembling
and your tears drip down into my palms

I don't know how to fix this 'cause I don't know what went wrong

we're melting down and I think it's time to skip town
but you can't move and I've been subdued

so goodbye my darling
our paths are finally parting

be sure to bring your bones home with you
when you go

we were spoonfed cliches about parties and wild nights and kisses under flashing lights but no one ever told us about the other possibilities

that maybe people wouldn't like us enough to invite us
or life would throw us chemical hurdles to surpass
or maybe we followed those lights just a little too closely and found ourselves standing in front of headlights and broken glass,
having tried too hard to find our storybook lives and instead wrote the beginning to a somber tale of loss

stained glass with sunlight streaming,
a single rivulet, a single tear,
slips silently down the bridge of a nose
to fall silently to the tip of another.
eyes meet while hands continue to cradle
the face of the accused, the prosecuted, the expatriate of vagrants:
three words, blooming like delicate flowers from deep emerald vines that grow freely and climb the trunks of trees with more nimbleness than the lost boys themselves,
three words, gliding like the lone droplet from the lips of the holder,
descending to the ears of the held,
and they rang out as much as a whisper could, among dancing dust and gentle breath,
"you
are
forgiven."

i’m drowing and i can’t tell which way is up
i can’t tell if i want to know which way is up

i am quaking like sand and soon my mouth will froth like the shore
it’s cold and it stings and there is so much saltwater filling my lungs, filling my stomach, filling every nook and cranny

maybe the people of the sea didn’t lure people to their deaths
perhaps they merely helped them attain it

venom slithers in and it’s all i can do to reach out before i’m swallowed up
the hole is bottomless and black as star-speckled satin and equally as empty
fingertips graze mine and words reach my ears but they aren’t what i need to hear
i want to make my own venom drain, not just be responsible for someone else’s anymore
the feeling is hollow. it doesn’t provide sustenance; it doesn’t keep me warm
there’s nothing there for me now and i need something to keep my heart beating and my lungs breathing and my synapses firing
i need the whole ******* universe and all the elements to crawl under my skin and make me whole again, *******
i can’t stay empty anymore
i want this void gone before i collapse on myself and **** everything around me in
because i know i’m made of stardust, sweetie, but even stars explode and burn out and die
these bad thoughts are draining the heat from my core and soon i will cool and crumble
fill me up, make me feel towering mountains and raging storms and the eternal beating of waves on sand in every cell, every atom
i won’t stand for this emptiness anymore
i won’t let this venom be the last thing i taste before everything fades to black and the curtains finally fall

do not ask someone
to love you if you cannot
love your own shadow.

teach me how to love myself.

show me all the freckles that dot my nose and
show my the way my shoulders look when i stretch.
describe how my fingers feel tracing your skin and
describe the way my voice sounds when i get sleepy.
touch your favorite bones and press your face into
your favorite nooks and crannies;
explain the way my heartbeat sounds and
what i look like when scared.

teach me how to make a home out of this body,
just as you did.