I've learned to submerge
in sparse droplets of
your scent and skin

I let them melt on my tongue
so that they may sustain
my body for months

I will bathe in this for a moment
but your fresh wet scent
will linger


and I refuse to quench this thirst

though I know I'm going to drown.

I was told that the people you love
turn to ghosts inside of you
and like this, they survive.

But no one's ever told
how it feels to become the ghosts
that loathe being kept alive.

You always come to mind at dark.

Your flesh dissolves
through my open hands--

your scent becomes fleet
and pale.

Sometimes I'll inhale
a warm clove of you

but more often


I inhale you through.

I want to be
in a flesh warm home
with walls the color
of bone.

One of the homes
where ugly is kept
'neath fresh white faces

and all that lies
'hind lily frames
inevitably erases.

Your trail of ash
bright as a scar

lead me astray
in skies of tar

it was a threadbare
love affair

doomed from the very start

and if I know
you at all,


I know you've gone too far.

I was at home in the crooks of your arm,
tall above the root.

Our sweet-bark skin, new spring at hand,
trepidation rendered mute.

The earth succumbed to restless sleep
as I ebbed between your palms.

The moss and shroom a witness
to the wilting of our psalm.


But the story the crow told me,

is the only one he knows:

like the morning sun you come,
and like the wind go.

If time allowed
I would return to you.

You and I are far too young,
to pray this world will not turn round.

You and I are far too young,
to pray our lives succumb.

Yet we lie awake at night
and waste away
by day.