Draw me in pencil,
Draw me in chalk,
Draw me in bright colours,
Draw me with shades,
Or draw me paint brush
Stokes and all,
But if you draw me in your mind, do it so you never forget me at all.

Look not unto the vast and empty skies
To seek to find the love that e'er has flown
For in such grief such love may yet demise
And lost in grief may cease to e'er be known
Stout hearts may keep a candle vigil bright
A homely beacon tremulous and warm
And sheltered by its dancing flickered light
May weather yet the dark unending storm
Yet hope is oft an unforgiving friend
And hope for love when love has flown may lead
One down a lonely road that has no end
So hope for love is oft a thankless deed
Till hope has gone our eyes will ever roam
The oceans wide till love returns to home

Rouge, threaded dragons intertwined with oriental cherries
stain a mockery of silk spread across an unsteady table.
The lady, dwarfed by the redwood counter,
has skin stretched taught across the bones of her temples
only to softly be drooped and draped around her jowls.
She caught both my eyes in the little dips of her palms
but wrinkles worked onto her face are focused on receipts
and she is obviously oblivious that her hands, veined with sickly blue,
had struck me so hard that my head is thudding numbly.
Her nails are narrow and naturally long,
set into the spotted skin of her delicate fingers,
pulling at a memory bathed in red by the Chinese lanterns
hanging over me, the couple near the kitchen and tiny Mrs Huang.
Her hands gesture to me after calling my order twice  
and I walk towards them to take the sterile, plastic packet
so that I can finally exit to the alley and spit into the gutter
a touch of an image much too familiar
to only belong to Mrs Huang.

I love you, but not in the way that poets mention.
It’s a love with mostly beautiful parts—
those which beautiful words
could do their best to validate and describe.

But there are other parts,
like
the hot, jealous breath on my neck,
heavy and hanging over me—
a howling black cloud
patiently waiting to
rip,
pour,
warp,
and
ruin.

Other parts,
like
the craggy barbed wire ribs you wear—
the ones I take in when I wrap myself around you.
Who these are meant to protect
remains unclear.

Other parts,
like
the guilt I foster when we touch
while you remind me in a soft whisper
that you’re not mine to keep.
I face the bare wall and hesitate to accept
that to touch is simply to use,
and to use is so far from to love.

I love you, just not in the way that poets mention—
in that rigid crack between the brick and mortar—
in a narrow place where even the loudest secrets dare not echo.
I love you in that stretch of light between heel and shadow—
in the space that implies
but does not define
connection.

I love you, but not in a way that poets mention.
I love you in the silent incomplete—
the only way you’ll allow.

I love you alone.

you are a stampede in the hollow parts of my bones,
a chance to open the chambers of my heart. quite literally.
my plans for this body are to be wrapped around the intensities of yours.
keep you still.
I look into a velvet mix and hope someone’s there.
instead I hear God yell, who made me?
the bruises you left on my shoulders tell
the story of an orange tree stuck in the wrong garden
but still persisting it is at home.
you are the exothermic reactions happening in my veins.
hardly do you notice them shimmer.
I smoke the left over cigarettes
found between my nails.
they exhale your name when the air is cold
and frost becomes my sole companion.
you walked away when I gave you my hand
and all you felt were tears drip from my pores.
a sponge used to dry my eyes.
is this what it’s like to be in love?
hardly do you notice them shimmer.