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Declinism: is the world actually getting worse?

This is so sad I say
As I proceed through the same tunnel
A kaleidoscope ride
A reflection of city lights on too-tight walls
And too-quiet places
ABAB
my favorite sequence
when echoed and regurgitated
a mother bird
Consuming her own eggs
In a backwards kind of nesting.

Heaps and heaps
Of glossy cotton fields
The way you look at a photo under red water
After its taken its own time to wilt
In its antique frame
Where pretty words
Can't mean pretty concepts
Thinking I finally understand
What a ******* breath feels like
Getting trapped between two lungs.

The only thing I’ve ever been able to see without squinting through bad eyes has been ugly
and stupid
and worthless
each adjective another bullet to the body of someone who is already dead.
I left the bullets where I thought they ought to be—right where they were—lodged between vital arteries and anything dangerous; they were equally acidic beings occupying the same profane space.
I allowed my skin to grow over them as much as it rioted.  
I wanted to remind myself that they were a part of me now
that the least I could do was let them be
the way I had never been.

I have always been a non-believer,
naturally a very-much-believer slipped into my line of fire the same way the sun peeps its shy face out of grey.
But it took more than prying me out of my pad-locked shell to make me a believer too.
It took swimming the length of the ocean to find me in my shell first
then slaying the eight-legged monsters that shielded me from all things good
and every time I unwound the bandages in front of you that encased my wounds
inflicted from the sour tentacles of the beast you had to fight away
I expected the sting of your fingers fresh with sea salt to sting like hell
but you would remind me of how often you wash your hands
only not after touching me--
never after touching me.
I wasn’t familiar with the smell of flesh without it being doused in sanitizer;
The mess of my pain was just more dirt on their skin.

You were my savior
the only hero ever willing to carry a dead body with the same caution as someone who could still thank you with their lips—not cold.
You were red wine and I was holy Sunday
gnawing at the body of Christ
but you learned how to consume me still
without just swallowing me whole
instead savoring even the most overbearing bites of me that reeked of its expiration date.
You taught me how to let myself be consumed by something other than ugly
and stupid
and worthless.
You taught me how to let myself melt in the warm safety of your tongue
that vowed to speak of only sweet things.
But trying to recall that lesson was quieter in my ears
each time I urged myself to complete the daily routine of supplying you with a special pair of scissors
expectant that you would dig deep into my body
like everyone else always had
knowing that the gashes you created would heal slower and leave scars uglier than scars inflicted by the hands of anyone else.
I pushed my already-open cuts in your face
shut eyes and gritted teeth
awaiting the familiar feeling of the people you love
making their marks
in the center of your back.
But I watched your mouth form something that I didn't know could sound soft, something like "n-o", the first no that ever sounded as sweet as a yes.
No new stab wounds,
no tearing of tight flesh.
All you did was re-stitch me.
You caught my blood in its vanishing act.

With every stitch I watched as past words lost their dictionary meanings
ugly: beautiful
stupid: smart
worthless: worth it.
You drug me out of my grave and took the time to dust me off the way no one else had
hushed the knives in my own hands dripping in my own blood to fall to the ground
spoke the magic words that opened the gates of my chest so that you could squeeze the life into my heart again.
You took the eyes from your own skull for the sake of making a better scenery out of myself.

I don't have to squint anymore.
I can see "worth it" taking form of "worthless" miles across the street
and as you place your petal hands on my head and tilt one last time
I am watching myself do the same.

Blank canvases that inhale and exhale
with motives to live.
That's all we are
painted by Biology
a gamble in the darkness of who wins the lottery of appeal.

Sometimes we are created
using the best paint brushes
a stunning color palette
other times we are thrown together
extemporaneous products of failure
slapped on with crippled fingers
that lack inspiration
deprived of just the right shade of beauty.

I am a sculpture of proof
a hurried project
nose recklessly placed on the center of my face
cheeks not rosy enough in the frigid winter
disadvantaged with an artist who must have mistaken pink for blue.
My body is an accident
worn with tears after erasing and retracing
time and time again.
My past is scattered with ugly ripe bruises
maybe from tussling too roughly with life.

My soul
is the only thing
that is not of Biology's creation.
Soul is something I have dug deep into
with two frantic hands
before pulling out a heart beating gold
swollen with optimism
warm with love
spilling with kindness
stronger than beauty.

I am perfect
because my soul
is louder than my body.
I am beautiful
because never mind Biology's snide remarks
I am flawless
because despite my luck
I am a work of art.

Poems are like cutting your skin because thick words turn thin and human ink is shed and racing blood wears cold.
Poems just trigger more poems like trying to crack a razor out of its shell.
Razors are always the quiet girls,
or the Ghosts:
Dead human souls that feed off of other peoples "Hard times!"
A date on a page can be as tempting as a dark street with a broken lined scab.
Everyday for 30 and only one empty space has the courage to change.
You want to take that pen
We all know you do.
We know you want it running circles underneath your hands.
Define wrists without wet pillows and your brain in it's angry stance.
Try to imagine a place without him.
Skin is a cigarette.
Why don't you take a drag.

If you've ever broke out into hives, you would understand what it would feel like to be one.
If anxiety has ever stripped your veins,
If inspiration has ever lacked the blood leaking from the depths of you that explode like title waves against rocks, you would know what it would feel like to be stung.
I've realized I haven’t been aware of transfixed rage and clenched hands trying too hard to hold on to something that loosened its grip a match and a half ago.
The fluid in my liter told me it was never really meant for cigarettes; all they ever do is deteriorate.
There is blood covering my sheets and evidence to cover up my gruesomely blank eyes.
Everything is coming back to me and it makes me wonder why I've ever given up.
They say that words sting and if bumblebees killed themselves after hurting someone else they’d be a lot more like me.
This is ripped and crumbled paper in the form of a mental breakdown.
You have composed me of jolting pupils and false accusations.
I’d rather be writing in my journal.
I’d rather be scratching down illegible ink marks than doing what I’m doing right now.
If you can hear that, it’s the sound of windows breaking.
It’s the sound of your heart forcing itself to shatter
It’s the sound you make when all you want to do is become a drone to vivid darkness and a loss of senses.
I would be a lot more like bees if their venom could actually put the living in their suitable graves.
I am substituting pain for pleasure even when I feel nothing at all.

I don’t want to be a bumblebee anymore.

Day 1:
When you wake up missing someone, and go to bed mourning them, remember that the first week is always the worst.

Day 7:
When your body begins to pull you out of bed and begs your legs to run as far and as fast as they can, realize that the only destination you're really seeking is their arms, their embrace; that home encased in steady beats and familiar warmth.

3 am:
When your feet can no longer support the weight of your heavy soul and your car won't stop pestering you to take a ride, don't waste your gas.
Don't spend your sparse tears all in one place.
He wants to kiss you too.
That's all that matters.

12 pm:
Everything reminds you of him, you're watching his face dissolve in a crowd of strangers, you lose sight of him.
When you see a tall boy and a shy girl cooing in the corner where you once swam in his eyes and confessed your love without spoken words, do not fall to your knees.
Do not avenge fate.
What was once a wonderful thing of yours can now be shared with people you wish you could be again.

Day 30:
When you find that food is your last resort, a full stomach is increasingly scarce, and days pass of nothing but your bed swallowing you whole and your bedroom seeming more like a dungeon, open your window and remember why you always woke up in the first place.
Recall why you used to smile, and your remedy, his smile back, will make the sun choose to shine again.

Hour 3:
When your lips and your hearts leap towards each other to certain death, do not procrastinate putting your tears on a silver platter.
Do not mourn what will be mourned far too soon—just love the way you didn't want to.
And don't let go.

Day 1:
When 3 hours feels like day 1 all over again, lick your lips, keep holding on to him although his embrace expired for some time now.
Most importantly, pretend he hasn't left yet.
Ask yourself:
When can I love you this much again?

Beautiful is something we either never take enough time on, or always take too much.
So *******, with a pearly white smile on my face.
Because today, I will write about something beautiful, and I will remember the way it begins with the letter “you” or “why” or “you are the love of my life.”
And you are, there is no will, there is no way, of denying such solidly factual things.
But lightning never struck twice in the same place where I come from, and if we grew up in the same neighborhood, it might be easier to understand.
Pretending that love is just a thunder storm, and flickering lights are just temporary, is nothing but a permanent thought.
And you are tattooed right on my brain stem.
So if you are going to take me in your right hand and pull me close and let your eyes fall slightly until our lips are doing the same
please think about how many storms have turned into hurricanes
and how many hearts a hurricane can ****.
I know, this was supposed to be beautiful.
But mainly, beautiful things have to be truthful.
And the truth is not always pretty.
But you are breath taking
I think that is why there is still an ocean between us
but I am willing to drown.

I am barely one millimeter tall
dragging my body limp across
the sidewalk and I try my best not to make eye contact any contact
with those glaring flashlights rising from the dead off their hard-helmeted heads
I'm still trying to keep mine twisted at one-hundred-eighty degrees
but stuck in the bulls-eye of a man-made hurricane    I wouldn't mind hearing a snapping neck any neck.

One of the hell-bent helmets removes itself to reveal a heavy-set sweating neck
the ******* a skateboard and I recoil synonymously at the sight of too many men too tall
it's seventy-five out but it's beginning to feel negative twenty degrees
I walk as quickly as my frost-gnawed legs allow me to move across
this soup line but they're feeding the wrong kind of hungry who wait for their ***** coins to flip heads
to see who goes first to play tackle-the-red-flags with little girls and the rules don't prohibit contact.

I can't imagine these helmets in human form not even when they ask for my number to keep in contact
I think of the time I was sent home for possessing tempting shoulders and a somehow sultry neck
all I see are claw machines and me, a come-here-doll, resisting the balance being ripped from my head
I forget about pacing myself on the ledge of this concrete just so I can stand tall
I hear the voice of an ex-friend who moved across
town tell me that you "just have to be smart", but you don't learn morals from earning degrees.

I'm thinking about the degree
of which it would mean if I were to reverse the prey predator roles and dare to make contact
blood sharing the same bed with safety sparks a flame across
my brain, I don't want to imagine trembling while holding this pocket knife over the apples of their necks
but I am a no choice girl because every time my mother calls she warns me that I'm not tall
enough to even chop the branches from their heads.

The fifth one in line yells something at me about giving head
silently I measure the trajectory of getting the hell out of this corner the exact angle the degree
what lie is there to tell that is tall
enough that they won't be able to see the panic beneath my contacts
I swat away the possibility of nearby lips staining bruises onto my neck
I keep the idea of my big-knuckled boyfriend like pepper-spray in my back pocket waiting at the street across.  

Hey *****, you seem a little cross
you shouldn't dress the way women dress to turn heads
one day you might make a man break his neck.
It finally began nearing seventy-five degrees
again as I fumbled through my contacts
dialed the first boy I knew, doubling as the tallest.  

I'm on the acceptance stage of mourning the fact that I'll never be tall enough to come across as mean when I come in contact
with non-human beings willing to burn holes in the back of girls heads at four-hundred degrees, who put their ****** trophies on the back-burner as long as it means getting some neck.

Flowering in my hand
The godforsaken darkness of this bedroom
I stand for waves of consciousness
Although my only accessibility is to be seated
And to let the walls and the dry waves beneath us
Cushioning the air like newly wedded palm trees
All savory and nearly serine
Minus their little tatter tantrums,
Decide what is allowed to be easy on the ocean ears
And what is a blue-dusk silver shattering storm instead.

You jump in once
Your body all made of hands and feet
And the communal clatter of thanking God
Soaring your way down the only descend
After making allies with the butterflies
Making pockets in clouds
And does anyone know how to spell home
In embroidered lace pink
Or can we still go in head first?

When I was seven my mother broke a glass cup against the ground by accident
my bare feet taking the plunge.
I cried for an hour when the blood continued to gush the way it does
as my mother bandaged my wound
that is what it meant to me

until I discovered that my hot breath on a cold day
would encourage me to write words
invisible to the air
until it was against glass
until my fingers carved into the condensation
"I love you", punctuated with an off-centered smiley face
that too soon descended to frowns
when he would ask

"Where'd you get those scars?"
"Got mad. Threw a glass."
all up and down my arms
using my worst enemy
and my best friend
to get by with the skin of my teeth

parted slightly
paired with a not-quite-there expression
imagining better days materializing
under the roots of grass
personifying trees
executing what I could only dream of:
Sweet peppermint lips
rough stubble corrupting soft peach fuzz
branches restoring their shape
only with interruption
when a teacher would drag claw marks down my desk
"Do you agree?"

she spoke, on your first day back from winter break
but honestly you did not know
you were thinking of me
200 miles away

behind glass again
the same concept
of being so close
but so far away
of our palms pressed against each other
with only a sliver of clear distance between us
just enough
that we couldn't feel each others skin.
That's probably what hurts most
more than any amount of seeping blood
accident or not
piercing cold
nostalgia out a window.
Whispering good-nights
accompanied by glitches and lags
just wanting to be a part of our sweet conversation
a crack in the system
never so large as now
feeling the warmth of my laptop
wishing it was you.
I try to decide differently
find an angle that will bring me closer to you

your eyes have always engaged mine
through somewhat of a double framed looking-glass
taking them off so I could see you more clearly
so that there was nothing stopping us
even if my face would blur together
in strange triangles and squares
hazy colors and faded motions
you were still seeing me
much better.

Until I reach the big red "X" on my calendar again
I have to fight through 2 layers of glass
to really find you
without ever touching you
the best way
the worst way
I've always remembered.

I am crippling away at the thought of not being here next to you without the slight of your smile against mine
And I realize now that I have taken for granted every moment our hands have accidentally touched
And your smile still brightens my world and there is not much light in it at all without you and without you
I think I’m driving down the wrong side of the highway without my headlights on
Without you I think I am a pen that has long ran out of ink and at this point I’m just scratching away at scarred paper.
There will be no time to heal when I don’t want to heal when I’m not with you.
I’m trying to learn how to be my own mortician with all this alone time.

How much time passes
between inviting the sun to hunch in the corner of my room
canary and screaming for the world to stop orbiting
and suddenly it’s night
and you realize it’s been seventeen hours since your body has made a request to move
knees pulled up to chest empty and heaving white
every bone in your body an orchestra of creaking
soundly against the crickets leaping off the fourth floor of your balcony dingy
the background noise of your dreams
blood the scent of pennies ripe in the air
smeared here and there
across all things unwanted
where apologies thrive on eleven cold dollars an hour—
you never asked for this.

I am better
at tallying each shade my room turns
because it has nothing to do
with the cerulean in my face
and this is the only place
that I allow warmth to be subjective,
when it’s breaking through windows with hatchets
instead of being waited on
watching the mouth of my wall clock nailed shut
frozen in a minute and speechless,
I have no desire to dial an ambulance
bear witness to the whirring American frequencies
of heads turned 180 even during the scuffling feet rustling rush of rush hour,
I’d rather hear the ringing in my ears
of each ghost that has ever followed me back home
quaking in translucent skin.

I heard that three a.m. belongs to the devil
I haven’t tested that theory since I was seventeen sacrificing and surrendering
but I do know what happens between the hours of thinking without doing
wanting without acting
the bed a fort you are asked to hold down by that hefty feeling
in your feet that reside two blocks from where your legs used to be,
and there is no path filthy with orchids,
when dark is just on the brink of waking,
but you can’t tell the difference anymore.

Curling up next to an existence that is teetering on a tight rope
cheek to cheek and chest to chest with a tombstone that wants to show you how to ballroom dance
a blind date with your last breath
intimacy with death if you're brave enough to let it remove your clothes
it shakes you with an awakening jolt.
This is when everything should come to a slow motion slide show
of faces and revelations that have made you who you are
flashing before you like lightning in a rush for work
too blurry and inefficient to satisfy your last moments
like those snowflakes you'll miss savoring on the tip of your tongue
and everything else worth taking your time.
The seat belt tries to save itself tightly between your rib cage
it doesn't hesitate to invite death to your speed of light funeral.
Oxygen has given up at this point
choosing flight over fight
you are one millisecond overdue
there is no time to choke out your last word
or at least think your last thought
when one strong leap of faith
jerks you to the right of the one way road
leaving the 18-wheeled demon behind you
screeching to a spark inducing halt
tires hot for your blood
breathing fire to warm your deathbed
your body stills the world.
Slamming into the front seat
18 years as your airbag
did not hurt as badly
as wishing that lightning quick luck
would have struck out.

My sister howled with the dogs at the end of the street
her teeth looking more canine than theirs with her jaw-hinged open and her gums shining
as she became every house in our neighborhood
fingers woven into a chain link fence around her ankle
as if to create a barrier between the throbbing and the cool stroke of the air.
I couldn’t decide if her ankle looked broken-hearted or dumb,
slumped over like it was on a bus, snoring and dreaming of the stop it had just missed.
The sky slowed down to melt into navy and rosy tie-dye at the same rate as her ankle, although her face got there first
and I swore I heard the sidewalk crack lightening into her bone as soon as she landed,
I brought it up every time someone knocked on the door or dropped a dish until she wasn’t there to bring it up anymore,
but her hands always kept steady when she said she never heard a thing.

In the car ride to the hospital my skull trembled at the high frequency of my sisters screaming.
I crossed my fingers that she would stop, but not too tightly
remembering that ripe carrot snapping into two sound
acutely aware that I had never felt my own bones living in my body until now
how every pothole made them tingle and catch fire
and I sat ghost-still until we got home.    

I am a spread of limp appendages on a cold metal table when I get my first piercing.
I imagined that I looked a lot like my sister when her ankle fell apart
or each time she made sure to draw out her goodbyes as our mother fell apart.
The piercer clamped down on my belly button with an instrument that looked like something you would use to snap stubborn lobster legs
my belly button dangerously residing only a few skin creases away from my rib cage
skin seeming too thin to protect bone when in the process of perspiring,
like paper that has soaked for days.
I hoped that rock won against paper in an alternate universe.
Breathe in he said, like my sister couldn’t that day,
breathe out and it was over and I was closer to understanding what it felt like to have a bone double over
but I knew this wasn’t it
it wasn’t even close.

When my sister died
I tried pulling back my pinky until it collapsed in exhaustion from fighting back,
but I couldn’t finish it off, couldn’t put it out of its misery.
I wanted to know if death or a bone breaking hurt more.
Sometimes my body flushes with the thick shade of shame at the thought
that a shattered pinky could hurt more than the empty spaces,
that I would trade my sister’s dead body for the safety of my own,
that if I hide from broken bones in the soft confines of cushy couches and toddler heights,
then what does broken feel like when it defines more than limbs.

I am tired of waiting for December
with her white teeth and prolonged visions of lace veils
to get dressed
put her makeup on  
before taking the long road back to me
weary of her indirection
as if she can't remember the short way
as if she wouldn't drive 200 miles
guilt heavy in the trunk of her car
for being so far away
just to steer clear of me
because you can't build a fire
in the middle of an ice storm,
or her cold shoulder all the same.
There is no use in laying in the sun
when the possibility to thaw
is below 0.
I am tired of missing December
each time January melts away.

I’m trying to grasp the concept of your hands grasping me, and there’s light in your serenely contorted sweat;
Bulging veins pressed against sweet warm delicate mouths exerting a mass of please, and please what?, and a quiet commotion of soft tongues making love, fighting slow and easy for something like a longer I love you, maybe, or another tight grip towards a vulnerable destination, where angels live in the whites of your glassy eyes, but I just want heavens doors to slam shut.
I might be the devil and I demand: “Oh please dear god”, but my body is your only savior and getting on your knees to worship a little never hurt anyone.
I ache for your touch, till your flames are still
I am swimming in thoughts of your ice-made skin, and I am satisfied with hypothermia
Beg for you to watch me choke on my breaths until you can write a whole new list of tasteful sins on my naked flesh.
I want to swallow you whole, want to melt away with you until we deliquesce into one.
I crave you
and me
a few hundred tick-tocks full of skin on
tender
post-possessed
skin.

The existence of love was never a belief to me, sitting on the shelf right next to God and happy endings
collecting dust and fragments of all the times I thought, "I don't want love to be real, but I think I love you a lot."
Imagining what it really means to be held and to be blanketed with a warmth that is warm inside and out, without being harvested in a ***** cold, dying out like bare trees in the December seasons, that shudder and shake the chips in their shoulders until the sleet can fall off.
It's like walking until you reach a point in the road where you don't know where you are, where you're headed, why.
And it doesn't matter in the slightest.
There is nothing left to say than I love you, and that I don't believe in ghosts.
But you haunt me even when my eyes are closed and my ribs are moving in slow motion.
I wish I could kiss you even in my after life, and if heaven exists, I'm going to look God in the eye and ask him why he didn't give you to me sooner.
And then I'm going to tell him that all I've ever wanted was you.
No golden thrones. No pearly gates. No velvet beds.
Just satin skin wrapped over the bones I hold so dearly, as close to my heart as I possibly can.
I don't believe in love.
I only believe in you.

Face to face
gritting teeth
where sleep is my enemy
death is my best friend
my body is stripped
bare
naked
on your bed
cold like an operating table
and sticking to my skin enough
that it just might be.
I can't pull it away
without wishing it was off
I can't sit in a white room
without puking up last night's breakfast
and I might let you split me open
minus your doctors degree
******* insides
banana-strawberry smoothie
with a dash of something evil
a flavor that has always made your taste buds tremble
with disgusting delight.
Tell me again
with a scalpel in your hand
why you're giving up now?

There is pretty
bubbling
a faulty science experiment
on the verge of the most compliant shade of peach
blanketing itself even beneath the dirt
of my fingernails.

Daddy can you open this?
Because spoonful’s of
Mommy can’t
Never sat well
on the tip of your tongue
nor the bottom of your stomach.

The click
Resonating in my ears like a clatter
of spinning off the head
Of a bottle of red polish
Black clouds of acetone
and nights worth drowning
in salty tear-duct rain
spill over your fingers flawlessly
the way you wish pretty would
on every square inch
of your not-pretty-enough.
But pretty is all sealed up
In the same transparent plastic wrap
That clutches each brain stem
The way grubby clawed tentacle-men
grab your ***
choke every dose of ill-met
red lipstick mirror encounters
from you
and every you
ten-years in the making.

You look so pretty
on the outside
but no one wants to see
your landmines
zip modesty up to your neck
every morning
before you leave your apartment
to enter a circus
the confines of impending death
each man and each billboard
equally a lion
but please
for the love
of your ugly-*******-face
ugly-*******-face
ugly-*******-face
be pretty
hold white teeth to your skull
and your skull to a fragile pair
of rose-meadow-shoulders
remember to ignore the thorns
relentlessly.

Pretty is easy
as a puncture wound.
Pretty is the only green light
In one thousand miles.
Don’t be a girl—
You’ll be okay.

If beginnings are always so simple, endings must be just as hard.
To watch you go would be to let you cut my wrists open and bleed on every letter you've written me, every kiss that still lingers on my not-the-same-without-you lips.
To un-grip the fingerprints that make your palms what they are
would be me losing my identity all over again
and letting the thought of your laugh get the best of me.
I'm holding my breath until the next time I see you.
7 years is a long time when 2 days are long enough
And 200 miles is too far away
when my heart cannot stretch that far without falling apart.
I can feel my body slip into survival mode
shielding itself from something that could **** more than a physical threat.
I want to cling my anxious onto you
sew myself to the back of your shirt
Search your vertebrae like it's the answer to why I can't breathe at a steady pace when I can't hold you for a second longer
Why someone so medicinal to my wounds would be taken away quicker than I was ever able to take them all in.
I'm trying to bottle it all up but all you can do is shake.
I know you say you only want the best but empty bottles like me were never meant to be opened.
You were the only one with hands strong enough to do it.

I think I fell in love with him long before I even knew I did. I think I had fallen in love with him between trying to figure out if I had already or not. When he cried the day he thought I was going to smoke a blunt with a couple of kids older than me, and the day he told his best friend: "I think I'm falling in love with her." Up until right now, lying on my bed with my head rested on my crossed arms, listening to the sounds of his breaths lull him into deeper states of sleep; dreaming dreams you and I can attempt to imagine, but only a beautiful human being like him has the privilege to see for himself.
Sometimes when we're on the phone for a while, and I know he's tired because I can hear the rasp in his voice return just like the night before, when he was at the verge of sleep, I don't say anything. I just let him. I just let the silence fill the void between the crease of his struggling eyes, and I remain silent. I let his eyes close. Because I like when he falls asleep. It's comforting, and peaceful, and less lonely hearing his little intakes of breaths every so often.
Sometimes I don't want to hang up, because I know I'll be lonely again once the sleepy silence between our call has ended. I usually draw it out for an hour or so before I force myself to hang up, but never before confessing my love to him every night, quietly, as honestly as I can. Of course he can't hear me, but I always hope that maybe somewhere in his unconscious mind, my words are able to reach him. Maybe in his dreams. Or maybe they never do, seeing as though, occasionally, I remind him in the morning of what I said to him, and he smiles, and pleads for me to never stop.
And that's what makes it worth it. That's why I say words he may never hear. Because somewhere along the line, heard or unheard, my subtle words are still able to put a smile on his face. And I think that's all any of us strive for, is to smile, and to find love, and for love to find us. Whether or not we even know it ourselves.

I still haven't hung up.

I don't think I will.

If there is ever a time
that I do not ask you to come home
or to come closer
please worry
please proceed anyway
despite whatever my pleas may be.
I only want you to show me
what it means
to be loved to death.
If you love me like you say
I will tempt your softness
I will nurture a knife under the bed we share
our so-called-sanctuary.
Do you mind its company?
The moment you do
you'll find yourself empty
with nothing left in my tracks
but the knife
where my silhouette used to be
and a locked door.
I will miss you
until I won't anymore
and you'll beg the walls of your own bedroom
for me to come back.
I'll be **** sorry
when I forget the directions
but remember your address.

I once knew a boy
who perceived the darkness in me
as if it was some benign escape into light
sweet and warm
almost fireworks.
Little did he realize--
fireworks are explosives too.

I once knew a boy
who lit up more houses than he was invited to.
He was a match in a fire place
the slap of a broken flashlight against a palm
a candle illuminating barely visible text
and a scorn of "I never asked for this."

I once knew a boy
who was so bright that he burned the sight out of every eye that looked.
He would apologize
remainder of green-veined eyelids
stuck in its trap of reincarnated ashes
held like water in cupped hands
wrinkled with healed burns,
lacking time.

I once knew a boy
who I promised would never become a victim to the account of my life
that I would never let his most used adjective become "once."

I once knew a boy
whose hands shook terribly bad
when I asked him to load my promises in his mouth
and hold them to my head.  

I once killed a boy
who played with fire
before accidents could replace me.

Cupped in the belly of my palm
this grit-ridden
hand-held cave you gave me
right at three years
appearing on the outside like pale skin
after leaving sunscreen an oil spill in the pool
and burning
patchy and bronze
although I took silver
each time your voice rose a flame
in the gust of its crescendo
the gemmed insides of this Earth piece
looking too much like the shards of glass
that would explode iridescent
in fist-fights with paper walls
fragments gleaming like ice crystals
daring their toes over the edge of a roof
leaving accident’s name a mosaic of wine
all over the floor
and my jaw hung open
as wide as the geode’s
only its jagged teeth shimmer
rather than break
when in opposition with force.

This rock-body knows rock-bottom
replacing softer limbs
that had once retired themselves
like scissors that fit right in with my hands.
I am trying to relive a good day
the beach right before my eyes
this jewel-thing beaming white under the licks of the sun
glimmering like the salt of sand
and solstice iced over the delicacy of sea itself
reminding me for the last time
of when you were nice.

I swing my arm behind my back
and give this geode a fair chance to sprout bird wings and fly
make its place
amongst all other
shiny ocean fixtures.

You're falling in love
just out of high school
visualising pedestrians full of life
of memories
in your local grocery store's small-town parking lot
dreary day and grey sky
only because he left you empty
in this lonely world
too petite for two people
whose souls have always been too large for this type of crowd
manifested by people always staring
when we burst with color
at the flick of our fingers on cheeks
or warming cold hands
and when you stopped cramming into this space
when you stopped trying to fit
you made it your destiny to absorb
to fill rather than to squeeze
finding solace in places most unusual
because every ******* thing
still reminds me of you
even when the clouds don't want me to see
the sun fights for it's moment of fame
screaming
"Please see his face one last time,"
and I do
I obey
leaving me worse off
but better than I was before
because you can cut the string around my index finger
with your knee quivering smile
but I'll remember
I'll still keep your promise safe in my palm
in the center of my lungs
and I don't care if you trash it
as long as you keep mine.

There's a myth about a boy with lips so toxic he takes a year off your life every time you kiss him.
I called him cigarette boy.
He was like a liter.
A matchbox that wouldn't light unless you struck him the right way.
It's almost embarrassing to remember the way he made me feel.
He made me feel the way I promised myself I never would.
I am an icebox.
He thawed away at the cold.
I am a puddle at his feet.
I can't figure out how he did it.
His hair is much lighter than mine—his smile so much more warm.
He reminds me of the way honey melts when you stir it in tea so hot it burns you.
There were 3 incidents that I knew he would not be going away:
1. Imagine holding hands with a ghost, a loaded gun.
2. Being lifted up in a flash flood, letting his love drown like a brick.
3. I felt like a soaked bouquet of flowers, and his eyes would not stop convicting me of love.
His eyes were the survivor in this aftermath of blood and war.
He had to leave me so I could grow.
In the end we were so invincible.
We had to find something else to mourn about.
He apologized for every kiss with more.
When my time was up, he asked me to tell him a secret.
"I'd kiss you a million times more knowing your lips are the death of me. I'd sacrifice this last act of selflessness to you."
Lace your veins with my vengeance.
I'd come to you every time.
There are no voices left to be heard beneath my skin.
He was an already published novel that refused to have an end.

Are you hurt from all the acid on his lips you've consumed
Begging to be kissed, or to be killed.
In the slow moment of blue pulses, closed eyes: you're holding a dandelion behind your back.
You don't want to pick it apart,
you have to.
Squeeze your eyes shut for the full effect.
A train could come.
You could die just like this.
His kiss is escaping
You don't open your eyes
He opens them for you.
What do you see that you don't want to?
You have 30 seconds to make a decision: Love or happiness.
There is a cliff in front of you
headlights and a horn behind you.
He is a head on collision
He is what really kills you
the way "on impact" never could.
The only way you could ever really die.

And I die everyday.

I've got to fall in love again
like my whole house is not a home
when I pretend it's empty.
I have to fess up to this glutinous weather
using my hiding places to expose me
until there is no where left to hide
no rivers
no puddles.
This water is cramming itself next to me
a stranger on the bus with his hands between your knees
swimming up to my chest
a fetus awaiting its abortion
as a mother whispers that she is just fine
the sound wave first dripping through windows
until vulnerable enough to burst
then leaping at the chance to degrade it to its insecure shards
devastation scattered across my carpet floor,
this water is the second guest occupying a room for one
beneath these covers is where hope resides:
invisibility and the falsity of survival
this deluge is kissing every surface of my habitat
elevating me to the very top of what is my home no longer
an opaque angel
or a suffocating hell I cannot decide
its riptides part nature part me
as my lungs warn me of heaven on the other side of this roof.
My clothes are soaked but I am still trying to keep my feet dry
as I pull the blanket tangled around me closer
cover my face, condemn the light from coming in
in fear that there is none.
I don't remove my eyes from my indifference
splashing blindly to find the hand of calm amidst the thick liquid demise
a sadistic game of Marco Polo,
I do not hold my breath
like I did as a child;
I just let all of the small dams in my body break
and ignore the flood in my mouth.

I fell in love with the way our fingers intertwined and your breath when it was heavily against mine. I fell in love with loving you, you were a novel rated 5 stars: "The novel of a lifetime!", but my lifetime especially.
I fell in love with you without a trace and without a doubt. The only freckles that have frightened me are the ones I've faced that scatter across your arms in the summer, because caring about freckles, and also a dimple, and then a smile, more than you care about yourself, is scarier than I had originally thought.

You fell in love with holding me, and imploring me to love myself because you loved all the curves of my body and the way my jeans hugged my hips. You fell in love with the way my pupils time traveled, while your heart played the role of the time traveling machine.

Lastly, we fell in love with each other.
And I wonder if you contemplate why it is called falling as often as I.
I wonder if you find out the way I do every time we kiss.

Dear,

A lot has changed in the last year and a half
since the day God decided to scoop you up from our ember-warm hometown
and swallow you whole about sixty years earlier than any of us would have ever prayed for.
We would have all given up our one gold-embellished chance to write the center-spread
ecstatically collected our own blood and sweat and knuckles met with writers-cramps
if that meant watching wrinkles sprout permanently across your forehead
roots of trees burying themselves into the grooves of your smile lines.
We would have sacrificed all that hard-earned pain
that stain issues one through four
and that old putrid-beige colored couch
that we hated so much but clandestinely found comfort in leaning our heavy heads on still
in the crook of its homely, familiar shoulder
thinking that we were Shakespeare's apprentices
through fluttering eyelids
creating clusters of words that had to have been New York Times worthy—we were sure
although we knew the furthest we could really go is the furthest your laugh could carry across a room
and that's still pretty far—we could all spit shake and swear—
because I can still hear it sometimes all the way down here
where each tendon in my body is capable of feeling solidity
where I am haunted by uhtceare, wondering if you're too cold
where halos don't exist outside of dreams
not even when the sun is a cracked egg and dripping onto tables, the roofs of cars
not even then is anything brighter than the whites of your lively eyes
and I think you'd like to know that we're still thinking about you
that I can't think about white anymore without thinking about the vulgarity of bathtubs
and your hate for poems that include contractions—I'm sorry I've let you down
but I think you'd like to know that I've finally stopped having nightmares
and even the thinnest-skinned of us all, you know which one,
has been able to convince himself that the embrace of the Earth
just isn't the place for you anymore
that you've already outgrown all of us at fifteen-years-old
and we're sorry for not believing sooner that poetry can save the world.

You are the blood that runs warm beneath my skin.
You are the notebook I haven't picked up in so long that it's cold against my pinky finger.
You are the tears that are so close to spilling, so close to ruining this petty pen and paper and word ***** art.
You are waking up when the sun is still rising and there is still a smile on your face because you think you're still dreaming.
God, oh god.
You are everything unimaginable and I want nothing more than to leave it at that.
You are the failed attempt to scribble down every fast-paced thought through blurred eyes and an even more blurred heart.
You are never even thinking about giving up.
You are 200 miles away.
I am skin and bone that will soon turn it's luck to dust.
You are inside of me, you are my insides crumbling.
You are every feeling so large, so real I think I can grasp it.
You are the words, "Keep going. Keep going."
You are a million I love yous I wish I could have screamed.
You are the only way I could possibly wake up on the right side of the bed.
Hell, I'm not much for expressing the dramatic pros I've hidden in my heart.
But I cannot put words into any simpler form.
I love you.
I love you so much that everything else is so small when I look at you.
God, I love you so much.
I just hope you know.

Sure I'll try to find the nearest exit
No blinking definitive red and green signs
No airplane marshals
To give us the big hint
Of if everything is right again
hoping the night is capable
of falling in love
with the same ******* alphabet
and this is it
My soulmate standing in the midst of an empty doorway
Eminent impending death two steps behind her
Take my hands with you
Take my appetite
because it's been 5:44 my whole life
and I'd trade the ground beneath my feet
For whatever it is that you've saved beneath the sole of your tongue
I just want to love something unfathomable again
I want to stand on the brink of one million feet in the air
Asking if I'm high as hell or if hell is just this high
As I trip face first
Into a great gaping puddle of electric blue pulses
at the tip of my fingers,
Now is a good time to end it
now that we can look now in the eye
And call it then.

Layers upon layers
Of not only sheets
But hands
Limbs
Bare to hairy legged ratios
Creating symphonies of friction
Laughs outweighing *******
Clanks of teeth forgetting the catastrophe
Of love over lust.

Innocence is better preserved in a glow in the dark jar
Stuffed with children's movies
Until heavy-lidded two am’s
Versus using creaks of beds
To drown out the white noise
Of are we really happy?
Buzzing in our ears
Like gaudy flies with lightning blue wings
That we wish to swat away
squish between the two of our lips
until we taste subduing blood
or better yet
disguise the insect in a pretty costume
and play pretend.

Glass is seeping through my fingers
stealing a free ride on ice cold blood
these window panes are asking for forgiveness
while your front door is seeking revenge.

You cannot walk quick enough into the abyss of the night
before it swallows you whole
roaring back with a rigid teethed grin
and a kind stab to the back.

It is cold as hell
if your heart were to freeze hell over
I am dying slowly
thank you for loving me at least once
at least when both our lips were lost
and our hearts swollen with patches of frigid deep blue
the same way it seemed
every time we kissed
you'd leave sweet frostbite

You are frozen solid
yet somehow the only way I can keep warm.

Flowers sprouted from my mouth
Orange roses
Yellow marigolds from yours
When we kissed for the first time--
What a hybrid we made.
I was too busy dissolving in the scent of young love
Fickle on my tongue
To taste any blood.
I plucked the stems from their safe haven
And the linger of your lips
I planted them in their new homes
Little glass vases
Dying faster than they could be cured
withering, crunching away
one sickly petal at a time
because they couldn’t recognize survival
couldn’t grow in a home
that was a house without you.

Flowers can last weeks without sunlight
From my experience.
All they need is a dark room
And hope that the sun will return
And they will breathe as the days breathe
Follow its daily dance
But do they blossom
Or do they beg?

Grow old with me
As we’ve grown young
At the early hours of the morning.
Can we sprout limbs in bed
Climb to our highest peaks
Find hollows just big enough to hide our wounds
Can we strip our bodies to the bone
Unwrap our skin to reveal gardens
Plants born of rainbows
Can we kiss to nurture
Laugh to tend
Litter love as seeds?
As I break from my hinges
Soil turns to dust
Crumbling beneath your feet
May I still ask:
Will you grow old with me?

I am at a slow standstill with realization huffing down my neck.
Do we ever have the opportunity to tell them how much we truly love them?
Countless wishes don’t tally up the way real actions do
ones we sit back and merely hope will arrive
so that we may go on for hours the way we yearn to.
But in honesty, that is just not real life.
But why can’t it be?
Why don’t we see people sacrificing a few minutes at work
for a few moments of kissing on busy streets
ignoring the daily routines scolding us from all four corners of our brains
to utter words more precious than time.

Hatred could come very last as your gasp claws for heaven
so I change my mind.
I am here
I am now
replicating the saccharine agony of love as candidly as I can.

I know you see it pouring from me
and I pour
and I pour
and I spill as thoroughly as I am brave.
I pour space and time continuum's
and still
for you
I cannot pour enough.

I believe strongly in infinite strings
that pull definite souls closer to each other
but I did not feel that tug the way I did
until I met you
when I thought two planets were colliding into one
a new solar system was being bent to match your eyes.

There was one single moment
that stood our sorely amongst all other magnificent ones.
I remember accidentally cutting my thumb
the wound small by size, not by pain.
I told you it hurt.
You kissed me.
I didn’t know the pain went away until you stopped and it returned.
That is exactly what
loving you is.

The only difference is that moment was temporary
while we are permanent
scars on blank canvases
ashes impersonating dust
what is engraved in my skin when it is you.

I have looked so widely and thought I had loved so deeply
still not far, not wide enough
as I was just scratching the tough surface,
this is more than butterflies
and better than death.

You cannot be summed up in pronouns
nothing short of wedding vows
for I who is so methodical
craves to live illogically with you.

When you are doing absolutely nothing
is when I adore you most
when you sit there
with nothing in the world but you
is when my heart cannot swell greater.
You, in your simplest human form
is etched into the core of my soul
where you have dug up far beneath my chest
things that even I have let reside in its own dust.
Your purest version
is when I love you primitively.

Although your grand endeavors are nothing to reckon with
and their end would shave my heart to its gruesome core
I love you, when you are hand to hand with me and you do not know it
when we dance in my driveway and somehow it is not cliché
despite the fire in your eyes and the glimmer in my throat
longing to entwine with yours.

When your voice cracks
your hair does strange things
those icy veins that layer the bones in your fingers
on the front of your hands
your golden eyelashes
when you are absolutely unaware
and the consuming happiness that moves me
when I lull you back with
“Baby? Are you awake?”

Darkness warmly embraces your face
like the milk of your naked skin
when I know you as a whole
muttering prayers down the spine of your back
dousing your worry lines with kisses I wrap in bauble
and the amount of times I’ve almost stopped making love to you
to write it all down
but could not will myself to so intensely
that I sacrificed letting such sacred things like good ideas go.

But I do not clutch to regret
when your skin is meant to be upon mine
your voice a legality when harmonized
with the type of laughter that only prevails
when you can no longer breathe
and you realize
you,
are in love.

And if I could freeze this moment in time
paste it to my walls with forever  
I would.
I would make an extra copy
just so I could organize it in my filing cabinet
label it: Love. The life in me. Him.

He, is the heart to my heart
the soul to my soul
replacing your birth name with Love
the name my universe knows you a whole lot better as.

I have come to my conclusion,
as your lips clasp the tremors of my heart
one more time.

No poetry
no words
no existence
has the capacity to compare the love that you are to me
the love of mine that you hold.

At my least is this,
so that my undying love will not halt
after this poem signs its period:

You—
are I.
Speechless
impossible.
Piecing together
overwhelmingly
all that is love.

Something of youthful cut grass
blading itself through a crisp March
as to guide crickets into breaking their backs
so that eyelids may kiss pillows in matrimony
so that the smell of the approaching summer
in its fleeting Shelby Cobra
driving so smoothly when running away
but leaking a trailed gallon of purposeful gasoline
when trying to get to the other side of culpability.

I dissipate fragment by fragment
into the dark
equating to pollen that has had its day
as satin-skinned camellias
in a swift breeze.

A tongue swollen with nectar sweat
the wind strokes its fingers through my solstice hair
drunk with humidity
enticing sleek branches
to swoon with the cadence
of sweltering heat.

I've made it a habit to set fire to the things that I love
And you, I love the most.
For you, my old words have thrown themselves at purple flames
and drowned them out with inferno tinted tears.
We are creatures of habit
and I may have made a habit of myself.
What if I don’t want my habits to reek of sitting in showers
1. have I washed my hair yet
2. the water has run cold
3. I have already showered this much today
Confusing sunrise with sun set
1. has it already been 24 hours
2. am I awake
3. how much time has gone by, how many sun cycles have I wasted
You are only sleeping with tragedy, when you become this sad, for this long
But what if I want my habits to be nothing but repetitions of you
Habitual skin and bone and scent and love
But love is the hardest habit of all to break.
I hope when we are finished, I am still in one piece.

I want to get home so that I can sleep for 17 hours with my mouth hung open so wide you’d mistake it for a black vortex where planes and people and boats and Ameillia Earharts go mysteriously missing and it petrifies the **** out of you that these things exist on this planet if you think about it for too long your eyes beady and blending into the dark of your bedroom or I want to jump out of my window and die or run up and down the four flights of stairs in my ****** apartment complex until I feel the muscles and tendons and ****** pink strings in the meat of my thick thighs burn and come to life and the fat rupture and break apart beneath my skin, or maybe I can just run a regular marathon but that’s so ******* boring that I would rather gouge out hollows between my ribs with a spoon because why the **** would I want to run in a straight line, I want to run up and down and zig and zag and left and right and upside-down and on my head and with my legs ******* behind my back and at the speed of light like the energy-never-dies organism that I am, all that I am really comprised of, the bare bones of what this body is broken down into in actuality, except I swear to ******* God I better die one day

You've given me pieces of you that I have learned to never accept and maybe it’s because they’re sharp or maybe it’s because I can’t keep my hands from shaking long enough to explain it to you.
You've given me a reason to be blind, you dared me to never open my eyes but when I asked why, all I saw was you.
If I shut my lids tight, there you are, fireworks of green and yellow and blue. Only if I open them slow enough. But I am never careful.
Do you feel that constant heaving in your throat too? It must be Gods hands wringing the life out of you.
I don’t want to say I love you anymore, but I love you so much. I can’t handle it and I don’t try to swallow too much all at once.
I just let it spill and drip and burn whoever, I can’t say that I care.
All I can attempt to do about making you leave anymore is to make you stay.
I try to steady my pencil and remember how to write your name over and over again on my notebooks till they bleed with my eyes closed and my fingers inside out.
I want to rip your chest apart and I don’t want you to ask me to return what I found inside.
It’ll all be broken anyway, you won’t want it back.

Pain is a little misunderstood
wanting so desperately to be love
disguising itself in death
heart ache
blood shed
within wars
your dining room
your happy place.
It just wants to be noticed somehow
a kiss and a gushing pulse throughout necks and lips and wrists
or the same limbs being reduced to pieces
slowly
behind your dark window curtains
underneath your sheets
at your empty breakfast table.
If pain wasn't human
it would be a ****** bruise
in a constant apology
to new packs of band-aids.

You are the chills that make traveling down my spine its hobby
when your breath slides itself temptingly down the pattern of my sweating neck
and both of our names become a slurred chorus of too-close puffy lips and rolled back eyes and soft writhing hips being spoken over each other with more crescendo each time and louder and louder and you know my fingernails have always thirsted for your skin and my tongue has always pleaded to be a part of you and
my breaths have refused to do anything else than inhale your exhales.
The windows of your car are perspiring like us and I think the temperature is rising high enough for everything to explode.
I think this moment was always meant to happen.

"Thank you."

Matched a crisp white shirt
as if she knew.
Even a red dress was dull next to her
absolutely beaming
illuminating the night with just her laugh
and one simple sentence
"You look gorgeous."

"Thank you."

The most important thank you I would ever give.
I flashed her a smile that did not attempt to compare,
that happily strayed from the limelight
to let hers take the stage
the way it naturally did
with a humble glow
though it was an outright shooting star
a comet that would impact.
My smile did not shine like hers,
but instead radiated gratitude
a contentedness only obtainable in her presence.
She gave me the best accessory to a prom dress
ever imagined.

“Thank you,”

the second time
was a heavyweight in my exhausted mouth
that I let drop to the floor.
Apologies for a loss that is not mine
but is the world’s
was not enough
for cars that still drove to slam their breaks
for people who still laughed to mourn
for the Earth to halt its rotation
to a complete stillness
as if the sky was not guilty for being so vivid
as if the sun was not ludicrous for shining so brightly
when they should have looked broken
waiting for her return
on a brilliant day
tarnished much too soon.

Every shadow that reflects against the hospital floor
Before materializing in front of the grand jury
as a hundred and so pounds of grief
is suddenly so heavy
breathing becomes a sport
resisting tears composed of, “This is all a nightmare,”
becomes reality.
Each body that steps foot into the room,
the longest walk of your life,
is another tally of unwanted confirmation
another sentence in the eulogy
another flower to be laid at her grave.
The only verdict the jury can pronounce
is to remember
and to forget at the same time.

“Thank you.”

Although this aching has made itself a home beneath my skin
although it has been 4 days and everyone’s faces have frozen in time
since the exact moment we heard
as if we left with the hospital chained to our backs
protruding from our veins that it runs cold through
although I wish you could live in places other than the purple bags beneath my eyes,
if I look hard enough,
I find you alive in my heart.

Thank you
For being the smiles on our faces,
the laughter deep in our chests
hidden like treasures buried in the depths of the sea.

Thank you
For being the thin crease of sunlight that melts through my blinds
when I am tucked away in the darkness of my bed.

Thank you
For being our continuation,
for letting those two words pour from us eternally
in hopes that a lifetime of “thank yous”
will fly the distance to your ears
so that you may echo with
“You’re welcome”
Loudly enough that the words may etch themselves permanently
into our hearts.

I believe that the sound of beauty lies somewhere loosely with the stars you've been holding in your eyes ever since you muttered that they were too hot to hang onto anymore, that fingers were slipping and the universe was too large, too cold anyway to fall in love over and over again with overlapping atmospheres.
Look at me with your lips.
Since when did we start kissing with our eyes, and why did it have to be me to soothe your wounds with my mouth.
I'm trying to find you somewhere in all the blood in my sink, more drowning than swimming, but all I'm getting at is that I should have loved you harder.
Tell me yourself then, why is it so hard to light a fire when the matches are 200 miles away?
You've always been my only light, my only primary source of survival, and without you I'm slowly leaving the place that was never really mine at all.
It started with the small of my back, that you should have been touching, that place on my shoulder that isn't quite right without being pushed against yours.
9 pm.
Not such romantic timing.
I'm always late with you anyway.
This time I'm splitting open my ears trying too hard to hear a scream that isn't there.
It ended with the numbing of my heart
where you should have been the whole time
where I'd never let you go.


(-a.r.)

I try to tell my boyfriend that I am depressed
less than three times a day
after that
it gets a little depressing
like maybe it’s a ghost that if I don’t acknowledge
it will glide back into the thin layer between the underworld and mine.
I don’t know how to talk about wanting to die
without personifying it
addressing it as a pronoun
saying its name and capitalizing the first letter
tightening the slick leather collar around its neck that reads: “If lost please call…”
sticking its freshly birthed hand on certificate
but all I can say
is when I'm sitting in an all-white walled in 9 by 5 room
and the ceiling becomes latex,
seals itself a vacuum over my face,
all I can think about
is what a touch of cardinal could do for this room
but the thought of my brains turning brown and ugly,
after a few hours of the three people I cared about forgetting about me,
is enough to do nothing
until my sweat becomes comfortable with mattress
and out of necessity
I move.

A boy with bruises for under eyes in two o’clock poetry
stayed ten minutes after just to tell our professor
that he felt like a dead body
and when I went home that day
I laid in bed long enough to watch my plant
follow the grace of the sun
eight limbs strung wide open
a gradient of striped canary strewn across my bedroom floor
as it left me.
I thought
maybe the dead body boy
will schedule to be known as existing only to his bed
the same days as me
so that our agendas and the ******* Gods and the other planets
that are of no use to me
can align
and when I don't show up in the world for a week and neither does he
everyone will think there must just be something contagious going around
maybe there is—
Do you think that throwing your dinner away and smashing the plate,
allowing shower water to run cold over hot flesh,
and treating sleeping as an affair that I can only participate with eyes cemented open
is a new symptom of the next bat-**** virus everyone will lose their minds over?
Asking nurses if there's any way to make permanent
the needle still pierced through soft pit of inside elbow skin and spewing
the hauling behind you of a sweet 20 pound IV like a
dead
body?

When I wake up in the morning,

I don't

know the difference between dreaming in increments—
and being alive.

I try to lose my thoughts but they spit themselves back in my face.
I guess there's a million reasons why I shiver even when it isn't cold.
I've been postponing this for a while now.
But you can't hold back for too long when something is screaming for you.
I can feel the flight instinct disrupt my body.
Fear is the most petty element, sleeping with love every night
corrupting it with it's infectious hands, darkening the pure.
I loved you for too long, and as of this moment, always, it is never long enough.
I tremble for the day that "I love you" struggles to slip through your mouth.
When you wake up and the first thing you do is bite your tongue and taste me trickling to the back of your throat, I won't be the first thing on your mind.
The ceiling won't remind you of me.
Your eyes will open, and somehow you won't be on your back.
You'll be laying on your side, something will make you realize why you can't love me anymore.
I'm trying to stomach this.
It takes all my strength to not dedicate this to you.
This was almost created in slow-motion: the definition of what time feels like without you.
My skin is so lost without your hands easily guiding the way.
Please don't forget about me.
I'll bang down your door till my knuckles are ****** before I let my name escape your sighs.