Tangled, withered limbs surround these arteries
Pulsing through the fissures left by time
A delayed strangulation over centuries
Has masked away this cancerous hive

I find my comfort in craving
The emptiness beyond tongues
The light consumed young

And I sate my lusts watching
The dust cave your eyes
Draped in your warm lies

The air too heavy to breathe
Suffocation and fever retreats
Sedation, self-destruction, blister blaze
Wasting in the dark of your soul’s gaze

We share these miserable chokes
We share these comforts alone

I
Summer came with scorching tar, grit
whipping up in the warm wind getting
stuck between the gaps of my teeth.

Boys come in sheets like rain,
leaving my curly hair a mess of cotton candy,
loving with marvelous humidity in the air.


II
I crave the familiar in fall. Men with
beards the color of dead leaves that absorb the smell
of cold air, bring the freshness inside with a kiss.

Will the dying season bring better things?

Naked trees shiver bare in the breeze. I could run
away, until the trees are cloaked in rich green.
For now we mourn the shed leaves.


III
Winter brings darkness
short but brilliant light.
From childhood we have been
tricked into seeking
someone to make us happy.

Muddle through the memories
holidays bring. Purple skies shine
late at night but the months
move like molasses as
snow turns ***** white.


IV
Rebirth brings light. Curtains on fire
with your eyes in morning shine. Haze
settles on the room but everything feels new.

Open windows coax goosebumps like your fingers
early in the morning. Transparent chill clings to air
though the longer days I've been lusting for.

Read the cryptic writing on the foggy
bathroom mirror, you'll never understand it.
My words have blossomed into more.

My body burns to rove far from man-made
buildings, prisons for the modern soul.
I need to traverse the frontiers white man stole
from those who made it their home.

I've been down to the Everglades of Florida.
Fan boats flew through the estuary lines with roots
of mangroves. I've been to the Hoh Rain Forest of
Washington where fog descended on the shoreline
and married the sulfur smell rising from hot springs.

I must experience America's coast to coast beauty.

Every spare seconds I spend luxuriating in the
sun, thinking of all the places untouched.
My list of desires grows as the glaciers
of Glacier recede in Montana, beckoning
me to the Rocky Mountain Peaks.

Old Faithful gushes, surrounded by wolves and grizzlies.
Someday I'll cross Yellowstone's expansive mountain ranges.
from Idaho to Montana to Wyoming. On the arches of
Utah I'll face my fear of heights and find solace at
the tops of time-layered sandstone towers.

Descending the Grand Canyon I'll study beautiful
colors exposed by years of erosion. In winter
Death Valley will be braved. The lowest and direst point
will exhilarate me with scaled creatures as sand
dunes whisper my name with every hot breath.

The Badlands of South Dakota will hope I come
backpacking through prairies to watch precious bison roam.
California Redwood trees and I will stand side by side
as friends. Yosemite will call me to her cliffs and I will chase
waterfalls and sequoia groves until I've seen it all.

I ache to explore the terrain that bears
my name, the country I call home.

I have so many secrets under my tongue.
I want to tell you that when I say "I don't care" I really mean:
I care too much. I see the way your shoulders curve downwards when you're with that someone
else that isn't me and I see the way you make yourself smaller to try and fit inside some definition
of love. I want you to know that I want all of you, so much of you at one time that the doctors are scared
I'll overdose.
What I mean is, you were it. And you are it. And you are everything.
And if you don't know what I mean by this, I mean- look at the stars.
Look at the ground, look at your feet. Everytime I see you I wish for roots.
So I can't move. So I can dedicate my stillness to never letting you make yourself smaller for me.
I want to tell you that when I'm silent I mean:
I hope you're doing okay. I hope you stop losing people.
I hope everyone who gets to see your smile knows how lucky they are.
I hope your bed curves to your back everynight, appreciating the freckles.
I know the constellations are jealous of your alignment.
I want to tell you that when I look at you and look away I'm thinking about imminence again.
How one day we'll see eachother and it won't be too late and I'll say oh my god, you haven't changed a bit.
And we'll laugh because who the **** am I to make any sort of comparison?
I want to tell you that when I say "I don't care" I really mean:
I care so much it keeps me awake.
I really mean "I love you even when I'm sober"

It all comes down to this:
Praying to Osiris to find me again.
Turns out I'm pretty lost without him.

the problem with us is that I have always loved you like you were leaving,
always left the door unlocked, like you might stagger into bed drunk with a few
different names on your tongue
in the spaces between breath, I love you, I love you
in the out breaths, I love you, I love you
in the inhales, I love you, I love you
maybe someday, I say when you're not looking
when you're not looking I think about how we have never looked out the same window twice
how it keeps me awake, that you and I will never be more than a story told to children
about the dangers of loving without breathing and breathing without sleeping,
I'm not sorry I lose sleep over you
the only thing apologetic about me is my mouth
and also my hands
and also my heart.
the problem with us is that you never believe me when I say that you deserve so much more
than lately
I'll go to my grave thinking you deserve firework eyes over dinner tables and hands
that hold more than they shake
you deserve a girl who is not more hero than honest
you deserve more than a good storyteller
the problem with us is that we settle for half way, never look both ways before crossing the street,
never care enough to anticipate a red light
you don't know the color of my eyes
some days I'm convinced the light's gone from them,
some days I'm convinced it's in your hands.

I am not going to lie anymore, it is easy to write about you.
It is a gut instinct.
It is muscle memory.
I kept the letters, the postcards.
The first one you sent is in bad shape; folded edges, crumpled body.
I almost set it on fire twelve times.
You don't understand how every night I stand outside looking at the stars
realizing that we can probably never see them at the same time.
There is nothing poetic about how we feed off of eachother.
There is nothing healthy about holding on to this.
But all I know is that when I talk to someone, I almost always say I'm sorry as a greeting.
Because nothing I ever say will be pretty anymore, I have a serpent tongue when you're gone away.
And I'm sorry that they're not you.
I will still get your words on me.  I will hold on to the pain of the ink seeping into my skin.
Forever doesn't have a fighting chance against the chokehold grip you have on my thoughts.
Instead of this train of thought, paper bodies.
Ignition.
Fire.
Think of me when the candle goes out.
Think of me when you're drunk again.
Instead of this poem, broken bottles.
Instead of this poem:
Blue sheets.  White pillows.  Your hair was never this color before.
Your poems were never about me.
Slam poetry in the way you threw my necklace in the river.
Find me waiting at the window for you to let me in.
You left the bottle open, it smells like whiskey in here.
Blue sheets but yellow flecks of sunlight and candlelight and streetlight.
The light has almost disappeared since you went away.
Instead of this poem:
Come back. Stay away.  I am fluent in ******* things up.
Fire.
Ignition.
Paper body.
Think of me when the candle goes out.

I hope she knows what she's getting herself into.
I hope she knows what your heart sounds like after a night of
comparisons between her handwriting and mine.                                                                                                                                      
I want you to know that I am through with dumbing
myself down to fit inside your god complexed hands.

Don't tell me I never tried to save us.
I wrote you songs with knives on my palms
and your ears were anything but listening.

I had a dream about you every night since you told me
you didn't know how to love anything with a heartbeat and hope.
I started sleeping again when you came back, and oh when you came back...                                                                                                                          

I am not sorry that my temper is as short as the lifespan of us.
I am not sorry that your smile is the only one that ever made me
want to wake up in the morning.
I am all pain and long long longing and she has always been
a storm with a heart dead set on your stillness.
Our problem is that I never stop shaking long enough for the dust to settle.

I've been writing with the same pen for four years and
you still only recognize my words when she plays them back.

Let it not be confused, foggy or incomprehensible-
you were the one.
Until the one became none and I stopped being a number when you stopped counting miles.

I hope she loves harder than a woman with dementia, relearning parts of you every morning
in the places you reserved with my first and your last- maybe next time.

Maybe next time, maybe next life will be different.
Maybe I'll be patient, stronger, I'll stop covering my smile. You'll stop pretending to be in love.
I will stop shaking and the dust will settle and her poetry will make you sick.
Her poetry will sprout evening primroses and she won't know that you always fall asleep before midnight
or that you're allergic to flowers that bloom when the sun is down.

I like to find beauty in the things that hold on to us.
The universe has been writing wills and testaments on my typewriter and I am trying to listen.
It's saying things like "Let go... a little bit... let go... your grip has always been too strong".
The universe calls me dear and I want to scream when he tells me to let go.
Let go. Let the light in. I'm tired of letting things in, I am tired, universe I am tired
and you are a ***** liar.
Nobody is coming back.
Nobody is coming back.
My wrists are full of dead friends.
NOBODY IS COMING BACK.
And the universe replies "but when they do..."
Everything is always a hesitance. Why can't something be forever?
My words will die the day I do and what will be left of me?
A promise? A broken promise?
A broken promise.
I hope you know by my poems if I am doing well or not.
I hope you know it's usually the latter.
I hope you know I have loved you as long as I have thought
and oh, I have thought.
/
/
/
the universe never saw this coming
the universe quiets his mouth, lets her speak with only her tongue,
tries to decipher the back and forth.
the universe never knew I was a shadow.
nobody knew.
and all that's left, when the echoes die
all that's left will always be our prolonging.
our promise? our broken promise?
a broken promise.