outside of my window
i watch the town turn into
a skeleton of the summertime
the trees have all starved themselves and withered away the road
covered in a dull cold fog
as if God himself ripped and erased the gold sketches of July
how odd I miss the afternoons I spent boxed in a cubicle
stacks and stacks of meaningless endless work on the edge of my desk,
like a poor boy in an assembly line

but when id come home
you'd lay me down like a hot cup of coffee
countdown my vertebrae with your fingertips
like a boy in an old attic
and i was your archive
i was that page in the encyclopedia
i was that record in the juxebox
and when id fall asleep, i was the kid  on Christmas Eve
maybe the world around us was blazing in dantes inferno
maybe the world ran out of fossil fuel
countries filed bankrupt
the apocalypse begun
or aliens attacked
maybe everyone fled to the moon
and the earth was nothing but a disposable waste
but what would i care
under your arms
i didnt even
complain about
the weather

when I think of you
i think after rain smell
sky scrapers and bridges
tinted by fog, the busy streets
empty yet filled with grey
you carried yourself
like your body was a
tourist's favorite love poem
nothing but a weekend
for foreigners, your soft spots
were man made and
your spine was cemented
so it's easier for people to
step on you
I cared for you
after the tornadoes hit
when your oceans were hallow
and just sand
I did not resort in you
you were not five stars to me
you were constellations

I wonder where you are now
off being someone else's city
when you could've always just been
my home

before the clock starved
our summer fling
I remember how
we would feast off
hour glass sand
spend every last minute
as if we just discovered
honey,
we would sweet tooth
away each other's edges
and the taste of
your mouth
I silver spoon fed you
with time
as if we can live forever
but
no one has ever
survived on sugar
and like us
no one has ever
tried

stars are caught, frozen
in the honey jar of the sky while
your shirt reeks of bonfire wood
your eyes fall red, heavy
you watch me all dizzy
you lie your head on my lap
and close your eyes
wrapping your hands and arms
around my child thighs

you wanderer
soaking under the neon revelry of youth
loud music, fast cars, hard liquor
mixed with juice

and now I remember:
you would hold me
and I loved you the way a child
loved the beauty of an ocean
from pressing their face against
a fish tank
we weren't going to last
but I have never felt so close

i imagine you golden
sun always behind you
peaks of light through the curve
of your neck, the
outlines of your jaw

i imagine you found
like anchor shaped shoulders
swimming the pacific
draped with blonde ribbons
and confetti dusk

i imagine pages of calender
flipped and turned
never spoken in familiar tones
our names never heard
only a simple thought before the bus

how did we get here?
backs facing from opposite sides of the bench
a reflex to turn my head away when you look at me
like a buried sin, a mumbled confession
half smiling to salvation

the moon floating on indigo sky
the way I would rest on your chest
specs of childhood and uncertainty
shaping into dying stars and serenity
a volcano eruption of broken promises
and we rest, like we have already been turned
to stone
we rest, like we have died before and again
we rest, like we already met in our next lives
i imagine this is what nirvana feels like

but in this truth,
you are not here, empty in the marks of november
pages left blank in the corners i folded to remember
your name

it is not fair to call you a
stranger
but it is not fair to call you
anything more

woman
we have fought this war before
do you remember this feeling
in the absence of dawn
our swords shaped like crescent moons
and our fists clenching into pond water
thin Lilly pads healing old soars
lovers spinning around the orbit
of a woman's thigh
spine trembling
I will not give up
because I have shared too many shades of indigo to be the other woman
I have given too much silk and lavender air to be a bedtime story
a midnight call
borrowed time
an option
a lie

woman
I have fought this war
limbs bending into someone who can win affection
If there ever was a way
I have given my palms to him
the curve of my body
the backs of my ears
my opposable thumbs
my sweet tooth
I have given him not everything
but the choice to take
anything

because fighting and war are two different things
one is of passion, unexpected,
the other are waves of the loudest ocean
a never ending grudge of today's and tomorrow's
a tug of war in the infinite universe
rooted from centuries of ancestors who have lost
a battle destined before birth
fighting and war are two different things
one will pass
the other won't
and that's when I know I have won