Uneven breath forms a cleft
between moistened lips, parting as I remind myself and you and everyone for the millionth time
that everything is okay.

“Everything is okay. Really,
love,
I promise.”

A lull.

Third time’s the charm,
maybe next time I’ll find myself in your arms. Maybe next time I’ll have something more constructive to say.
Maybe next time we’ll both feel convinced that my words are more than sounds ushered out of a mouth that longs and longs and longs to do more than say:

“Everything’s okay."

I hold my breath at the crest, the release and return of my body into your body into her body into a night full with the drumming of an artificial pulse, a pulse beating through and through our chests and out through the sway of limbs like seaweed caught on the current, reaching up and up and up towards the exultation of continued existence, momentary wholeness, whole, swallowed whole, we find our home in the belly of a whale, eaten by the motherdarkness, eaten, we are eaten and broken dowwwwwwndowndown into the bodies of a thousand strangers held in the sway, tribute paid, to be freed, even just for the length of a song, from the lonesome burden of individuality.

Forlorn, floating in an ocean
that is not my ocean
a cacophony of foreign tongues and beer bottles
bang against my thighs
leaving bruises like souvenirs
or the memory of good luck kisses.
I am an island
littered with the debris of
another world
breathing and floating and trying
to reach you
like the swans
gliding through ****, dipping down
to gobble up things invisible
because I can only find you
when my eyes are closed.
You melt against my tongue before
I have a chance to swallow.

Birds without song might fly
on languid currents
whipped into life
by their own impetus.
A desire to
continue moving
through a room without walls.
A room marked out
by the stagnant weight
of its atmosphere.
The seemingly endless
nothing
closing in with
a presence found
only within the abstract.
A solidity created
first in the lungs.
The cramped panic
of finding yourself
in the belly of a snake.
Swallowed whole.

When I put you on speaker
Pretending you are here is
As easy as closing my
Eyes against the dull sight of
Familiar walls, familiar
Reminders that I exist
In a world within a world
Found on the boundary between
Two elements intent
On being closer and yet
Separated by forces
I can't say for sure are real.

The moon is just past full
And like that half-filled glass,
I focus on my contents,
Ignoring the gnawing pull
Of a discontented soul.

Fingertips catch the hum,
the static electric,
low throated, zipper pull
moaaaaannnnn
of a large cat locked
in some forgotten room.

An empathetic burn
between my tense shoulders
as a beast like fire
roaaaaarrrrrrrsss
into life with a strike
at a night without stars.

My blind hands fear nothing
as they strain towards claws sharp
with years of contempt and
hurrrrrttttt.
Undaunted, I reach out
to feel you.

Desperate limbs drape themselves in the exact same shade of undiluted greengreengreen that we've seen in stagnant pools and empty hearts. A tiny verdant forest of lichens and moss to mask the barren grey of a self inflicted winter. Fingers cast out towards the sky grow thin and wretched with the desperate, exhaustive need need need to ****** the light from the sky. Forgotten are the mouldering piles of discarded stars laying around its feet. I think of that girl as I pick up a damp leaf and carefully press it between love poems and silent reveries.

Like a clocktower, I
Shudder thudthudthudthud
The second hand races
Beyond itself, beating
Out an uneven rhythm
On tired masonry
Whose brittle mortar cracks
Under the strain of the sky
Waiting for a bird or
A breeze to knock me down
Telling me it's okay.

I don't notice when my grip slackens.
The thoughts that held me have long since faded
into the hummmm that rattles through silence.

Untethered, I lose myself. Seemingly
broken into a pack of wild dogs
whose howls and moans echo distantly

Mingling with words uttered aloud
For no one's benefit: "Please, just stop it,"
tumbled down into particulate sound.
(As fine as sand.)

Those fragments that find their way back to me
snap capricious jaws, and left uncertain,
I flinch away from unfamiliar teeth.

You know that bowl that I carry around in my belly?
Too heavy for my frame, I've carried it precariously, trying not to spill.
I've used it to catch the steady drip that's been there since forever. I've used it to catch the rocks that I hurled up like a juggler (to find where I begin). You've taken it, and now you're swirling the contents, rinsing them with your own feelings, your own words (yourloveyourloveyourlove). All the garbage, the petty insecurities and fearsfearsfears, wash out and leave behind the heavier stones and metals that I've used to construct myself, contain myself.
The material of my foundation exposed, you continue to rhythmically, relentlessly reduce me to the shimmersilt at the bottom of the bowl.
Eroding.
Simplifying.
Until you're left with the specks of gold that you say define me.
The evidence of treasured trust that remains after I've allowed you to dump out my contents with gentle, sweeping motions.