you were eight weeks old
a small thing
but our hands were smaller
still, you fit there
held as though you were meant to break
maybe someday, but not today.

today, you made love into a character trait
it curled into our chests and settled there, somewhere
and the weight of it has grown
for i have not room to breathe
it has not left.

now, there is nothing left of you
save for blurred images
blurry eyes, salt water drops rippling in an ocean—

i used to take you there.
there, you would greet everyone new
like they existed just to learn your name
there, a child said hello to you for the first time
fifteen years later, you said it back for the last.

and i could not help but to think
if you had died eleven days later
you would have seen the flowers bloom.

remember i brought it up
and you told me i
was
paranoid.

softer kind of tea;
flower beds roll
over scars in the road.
winter is my home but
i'm always so
cold.

the weight of
my own thoughts...

...all i feel is everything:
self-sabotage is
art.

there are no main characters.
so i exist out in the misty blanket
that lingers after midsummer storms:
stuck in that apathetic draft
that betrays humidity and
its ethos.

chasing an ego in the snow:
appalachia turns it all to ice
and watches me scramble
to an unsteady stance.

i've never caught frostbite,
though i reckon she was
trying.

i let mint fester
in the front of my mouth as
a sleeping
beauty,
while hunger slips in t
                                    -he back of my
throat and i try to forget
            her

you want to see
how soft and tender my flesh is
and crack the inside of my mind open
like a pomegranate,
ruby jewels spilling onto white sheets.
i offer my plum ripe heart to you greedily
prey wanting to be hunted,
only to be left with sticky hands
from trying to hold myself together
when you walk away.

and now
when we are nothing
but dust
i only wish
that you let me show you
you were always
enough.

I was stupid to think
I could put out a fire
with the wave of my hand

You ignited me too
when you told me
my touch burned just a bad

I knew by the lack
of wavering pain
despite the tears I shed

And now I know water
would have done jack ****
against the fire in your head

i used to lay on the snowed-in flowerbeds
of nan's backyard. once it snowed enough,
you couldn't tell that a ****** of perrenials
slept peacefully there: all crushed
and crooked beneath
dirt and ice.

some days she'd come and join me
if the ground was soft enough:
we'd stargaze up into the cosmos
of pine trees overhead and listen
for the stillness of winter - the hush
of silence that lingered in the air.

ivy and henbit writhed
gingerly underfoot:
a quiet dogfight
of frozen earth
that begged a
sluggish spring
to come out of
hiding.