Is a werewolf locked
Inside of a heartbeat drum
A perpetual dance
Of unapologetic freedom
A tribal chant
A lick at your neck
An endless fiesta
Whistling through the window
Fat rolls of color, urging forth
Fires on the roofs
Embers burning bright
No lanes
Speeding and rushing
Murals of eternities painted on the city's cheeks
Abandonment of muscular restraint
Grains of salt on the rim
Limes, avocados, salsa verde, picante, roja
Burns in your esophagus
Corners of the mouth ablaze
***** warm air
Rushing in
Burns your eyes
Peculiar washroom smell
In irrelevant spaces
Plumbing creaks overhead
Christmas lights on terrace tops
Glass eyes seeing all
Swollen night
Bodies in heat and dark, all hands and sweat and breath
Give a hug to a toothless stranger
Who shows his gums as he swings from pole to pole
In front of the grand cathedral
Toll the bell
Fingers dipping in and out of everything
Hot street meat and browned corn
Put a gummy bear on top
Coat yourself in orange powder
Cha chi di dum *** *** ***
Let's go

I never recovered when you told me goodbye
I just told myself the person I loved had died
I still think of you when I am alone in my bed
I still drink, eat and smoke things to cloud up my head
My heart still feels too heavy to gaze at your face
That'd take me too deep to an unsettled place
I'm too sore from your grasp to even know how it goes
With someone else, the seed fits but still never grows
I still name you my captor, I'm never quite free
From your desperate ache,
broken ways,
and how somehow
you
occupied
me

in* feels
underwhelming but
out feels
distant and
peaking towards the whiteness feels
a little too much
like your hands on my back and looks
like your bared teeth damp face and hungry eyes hurting for me so the
aftermath feels
a little less
like throbbing pain while
before feels
like a
dream.

i barely know you
i know more about nap experiences than i know about you
i know you have a brain
i know eyelids carry all the gravity in the world sometimes
i know everyone has body parts that have been in places they should not have been
i know everyone has forgotten about time for a while
i know you the way i know about time
i know it lingers in the back of your mind while it waits for you to think of it
i know about ironic sunshine
how it stings those days you can barely open your eyes
i know this isn't the right way to live but
i know that it isn't wrong either
i know it's uncomfortable to remember things you aren't sure whether the other person remembers
i know there were moments you felt closeness without having verbal confirmation of it even though the avoidance of your eyes deeply
mystifies me

Warm moist
Thigh dark meat lingers
Like a cowboy's drawl
In your cochlea

I didn't know if
pulling it from the wreckage
would feel as good
the second time around.

I dragged it shoulders first and
it felt heavier and damp and the body gave and
lurched forward, unarmed and broken like trash strewn
across the road slick with black wetness
and silent like
a ranger at
quiet
sea.

Make Space between our bodies,
it once told me,
and find the dirt
in the cracks
on the ceiling of
what used to be
a brand new home.
(Greasy handprints on white plaster never
stay invisible forever.)

For without Space
there is no silence,
just the deafening explosion
of skin slapping skin slapping across bone crashing into knees connecting joints at the sticky side of muscled electric adhesion; breathing becomes mutual, then
stops.

the stuff that makes me loud while
the mind whispers softly, reminding
me not to speak
about the pain

the stuff that makes the eyes' luster dim
around the edges
(but we're always
evolving
behind
the eyes)

the stuff that makes us fitted
or whole or pierced
or shed or Other
or perpetually looking down
at our own interactions

the stuff that makes me hypothesize
you across the table
as fitted and whole or maybe
you are broken and barricaded

either way
I want to know you
and
your
warmth,
and
your drift
in the attention span
(can't count to five
seconds without
changing
activity constantly drifting
in and
out
of
life),
and
your electricity, and
vulnerability,
and
your ease in
knowing me differently
than I'm used to,
and
your affection concealed
with halfhearted punches,
and
your inability to Be
without fully Being

the stuff that glides
warm and
burns
down
the
throat