01 I am not asleep anymore
02 My body is moving underwater, slowly
03 The resistance of pushing each leg against the salt water
04   Warm and cold at the same time
05 It comes up to my knees and sloshes over thighs
06   Up to my thighs and splashes up over the waist
07 I venture further away from the dark shoreline where I awoke
08 I am not asleep anymore but I am cold
09 The pain of blood flow returning to my legs
10 My skin burnt from the sun and rough sand
11 The salt water stings everywhere
12 My heart is on fire

It is raining, and I am in love.
I love the rain
   and I love myself.  
Your bed is hot and I am lying in it.  
The rain is warm and I am dancing in it.
Your touch radiates heat and I am curled in it..  
I am in love with my skin and my folded-over belly.  
It is raining.  
Your heart beat does not exist to keep mine alive and I remind myself of this as I listen to every soft sound made by your body.  
I am in love with my strength and all of the fear behind it.
It is raining.
And I am in love.

your fingertips are branding my skin, scorching bright dots white-hot across a swath of my naked back

blisters form before i can even feel the searing pain rake across the path of your hands

A train sits idle
Driver turns off the headlights
Helps my night vision

Flying past cop car,
Headlights turn on in rear-view,
Turn off, I can breathe

Oncoming driver,
Flash my lights to warn them
Of deer or police

At small town train tracks
Car flashes brights at random,
Left me quite confused

I want to die out here with you
I want to decompose in your arms
our flesh slowly growing softer, and softer as our skin rots and our organs decay
our bones slowly growing closer, and closer
until our leg bones are not separated by leg flesh and our hip bones are not separated by hip flesh and our hearts seep together over our rib cages and our skulls press together, chin to forehead
dry leaves tickle our feet and the cool wind soothes our hot bones and the earth covers our clasped hands
until they can no longer tell who was me and who was you

1.  Headlights glowed like cigarette ends in the twilight

2. As soon as they winked out in the warm, weedy field, and the harsh engine noise snapped into silence, I began to cry.

3. Father stepped quietly towards me and I sniffed as I smelled the earth I was digging, the sweat I was dripping, the carcasses I was covering.

4.  Beneath the distant moon Father paused, watching me sift dirt over the remains of two limp goldfish.

5. The morbid scene glittered as moonlight sparkled off my tears and the half-buried scaled.

6.  A small tribute to their salty home.

7.  As if on cue, the wind ruffled the tops of the grain in the neighboring unshorn field; the undulating stalks mimicked the ocean.

8.  Their grave remains unmarked.

My legs are heavier than I am used to,
Except it feels so familiar,
I think this happens every night when I try to run in my dreams,
And its like forcing each step forward through thick syrup
Hardening wet concrete
A rapidly thickening slurry coating me.

I am weighed down by it, down on my knees now, hoping that grabbing the ground and pulling myself forward will increase my momentum
Ripping out handfuls of grass trying to get the earth to treadmill beneath me
Clay under my nails, more slurry, more layers,

The earth is a part of my lungs now
Wet pink webbing hardening from the outside in
Thin tendrils brittle and breaking off, sun-dried,
Cracking and dusty and making its way up my throat
A river bed of mud consuming the space in my mouth,
I reach in with my fingers and scoop out the muck and throw it but it keeps coming,
Filling and refilling my mouth, faster than my fingers can dig it out
Thick like dentist's putty, coating my tongue and teeth like taffy

The fear is always there
The fear mixed with the drowning feeling, drowning in wet clay,
Suffocating and afraid
That it will still be the same even when I wake up

i want to be
a cat wandering aimlessly,
not caring about it next day
not caring about its next meal or its next hunt

the sun is my goal
warm golden puddles
of cat  fur

i cant remember what it felt like to be a child

there are vague grasps at a feeling

of security, not yet shaken
in adults who are able to know and to do and to decide

I used to conjure flames from my fingertips without a thought
And used them to scorch foreign poetry into your skin

Instead of the joy of coming into a port and stepping onto land, land
That is familiar and loving
In love
With having my feet home again
The earth below rejoicing
After so many months at sea

I am instead adrift.  There is unbroken horizon
Spread out vast all around me
My eyes ache in my head from only seeing the sun, only seeing
The flat blue waves

I am so ANGRY that I am unloved I am so ADRIFT without my home port
I call out and the wind pretends to be an answer
All I want is to be longed for
For someone to pace
For someone to watch the sea

Instead, two separate lives, one at sea, one at home.

Im standing in front of a forest that is on fire
Rose colored glasses
The same tint as the flames
Theres deer fleeing, raccoon skittering into backyards
Growing red moss advancing on the trees
Blisters form on the pads of my hands and fingers
Something much bigger than the deer, is advancing
Its getting hard to breathe, my throat feels like it is on fire
Squirrels pair off, try to find their fleeing mates
Burning hair
Burning paws
Encumbered with fears
My home is charred and I cant go back
Only forward, fleeing forward with the shadowy unknown advancing in the forest behind me

The sky is blue
the wind blows cold
i sit and rock
with you, grow old