this must be love, you think,
as she presses your shoulder into the tile wall.

space is not a concept here
as she seeps into your skin
and you gasp
when she looks into your eyes
because she can feel you alive,
awake and writhing beneath her hands.
the tile is a dull ache.

later, much later, you will remember
that you locked the door, and that
the warmth spreading over your thighs
is dark and slow and blooming into
the blank sheets.

            the drain is filling up but the
            water is only another weight.
            you welcome it.

    your mouth is open.
    it is all you know.

she digs into your jaw
the flesh is all heart, but bones
do not lie, she reminds you.
but you sigh anyways because the story
always ends the same way: you,
the girl, and two severed wrists.

your spine curves against
a rock and a smooth place
while the sharp tang of sweat
hangs heavy in the air.
this must be love.
you will relish this.

    there is something forgotten,
        restless, shifting under a dreamless night.
    you want to open the window.
    your hands do not obey. you didn’t really
            want to open the window, then.

she whispers into your teeth that you are mine and
for a moment, everything is blindness, everything is
expanding as the heat races down your skin and
over your flesh and you are hers because you will always be hers and
you know this in the last chamber of your bleeding heart,
you have heard its chaos echoing, infinite, searing
beyond, beyond where there is no separation
of you and her and you, where
light begins and terminates because
you are the circle.

                                                                ­         later, there are lines of red,
                                                         three        parallel,            to match
          on your back like scars    of victory. you smile at this.

rivulets tracing down your neck it
                                                   is delicious,
             this sacrament you have been gifted.

the body is not a place to hide.

you mistake the fog in your eyes for
the steam on the glass, but no one
is there to correct you. then again,
it is only water, the same at your feet,
the same on your hands. you laugh.
water and fog and glass.

you lean over the toilet bowl while the blood drips out,
your ribs cracking open like soft eggshells,
but it’s okay because the cold linoleum will
cradle your head when it’s done. faithful lover. holy night.

your head slips into the bathroom sink.  
this ravaging soul of yours shreds.
this must be love, and this last time
the air sings it for you, the
candle snuffing out.

consummatum est.

si la dia pudiera dormir mientras
el cielo la cantaba su historia,
o si la noche quisiera despertar
con el oro reluciente en sus ojos―

el mundo se marchitaría por sus pecados.
si tuvieran un amor brillante que
no era cubierto por los rituales,
ni la luna viuda que ya espera―

todo se hubiera como infinito.
pero inseparable el uno del otro
en formas que podían destruir la causa

que sostena su belleza inmortal―
que no solo morirían en el mundo,
pero en tiempo, en espacio, y en la memoria.

strange how we can recognize someone
    by the shape of their shadows how
                        the places the light cannot reach tells more than
the places it strikes,                                  that the span of darkness across their throat tells more
about the way they move and the way they feel than the
                                  tear in the eye, suspended, caught on an eyelash, unfalling with the light;
       that the empty spaces of white that the shadow doesn't reach
tells me they are a reality                   and that the curve of their body is not impermanent,                                  or that the shadow is not permanent,                                           or that the light is fluctual, lining the liminal space between the two,
                                                               that the design of human nature is wrought not in one space but two,
           folding over and in, not in two colors,
but one: one within and one without.

silent girl in the red dress,              what else do you hide behind      that smile?                                                    "The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold.                                
The curves of your lips rewrite history." the hollows of your cheeks casting diffuse rose shadows, the soft glare—      lips that make the smile but don't quite touch the eyes,      eyes that see to you but you don't see them back,        —peering out of the frame, half turned to go
but just there enough to see (your eyes are so wide with joy); be this happy forever, it suits you. your knowing winter face is shy and alive, and you never say anymore but you are glowing— in this, ironically,            you are exceptionally dissonant; the permanence is
astounding—     startling, halogenic— you, the girl in the quiet red dress, captivate.                and no one will see you.

someday i hope i can find a blank concrete wall on the side of an abandoned strip
  of road like yellow hyphenated tape
                      perforated straight down the middle: you, me, a picnic basket in our cherry red convertible with
    a can of graffiti staining the tips of my fingers black,
                 brazen instrument of destruction   spraying across the
obscenely grandiose texts that paint the insides of our minds, excerpts from howl, anything from tartt, lyrical, aesthetic, so above our heads like the smoke on your lips oh
                    the road trip is the one line track to solve all our miseries;
somewhere we can just stretch our arms out to touch the wind, in and over and all the way through,     somewhere we can  stretch our heads back to feel the sun drip down,  basking,      soaking, heating  and enveloping          glorious warmth,
          linearity mocking abstraction, with all the semicolons misplaced, all the words inverted, all the secrets unkept and blurted beneath the rustle of tall southern grasses and the smell of burning wood and light sage and the dark loveless sky, cold and everywhere
  but we will save up swaths of the unloving night, tuck them in the folds of your flannel and the creases of your skin
       all the while listening to something sad like matt healy on the turntable
   tinny and distorted running out of our car speakers, scrambling for purchase on the cheap leather seats up and over and through

someday i want to keep a bag full of midnight dances and music          
                    softly escaping on the sorrows in our hearts and the little whims we pray so much on
     with a toothbrush and a change of clothes, watching as the glassy light falls, a flag on the ground, a foot pressed into it, digging past our lives, digging into the new america, paradise for pageant runners and paisley princes
         in the garden, and i have not found so
              in paradise we are found, and here we stand, two broken things next to each other. horror story twins, you the white, i the dark, running the whole house down. we leave with abandon. we live with abandon. whole, and then suddenly, inextricably, returned.