one halcyon summer, when
we strung ourselves out on fat couches, wilting
like thirsty, overheated forsythia, one
hundred or more crimson carcases found themselves
turned upside down on my floor. ladybugs discarded
from the designs of nature. i swept them under the bed.
i promise, when you die, i will not flick you out of sight
with a careless index finger (there will be sorrow, outrage, and flowers
picked clean of aphids).

You can have one smack
but don’t smack my ***
my ***** are too big
go sit your own *****
who’ll blow you for ****
and you can smack her ****
Don’t come to me to slap a cheek
I’ll turn the other cheek cuz I’m not that weak
Any day of the week you wanna kiss my ***
go right ahead, but don’t give me head
**** up all you want but don’t **** in my bed.

Sometime last night
I woke, I saw you beside me
In an incomplete darkness
I saw the rising and setting,
The warmth and heat, the spell of a skipped hearbeat.

Your eyes only barely closed
Light dancing in the shadow
of your lashes - swift, untamed
Arms still curved in a hug
Where I had snuggled close, Where I had kissed your brows

The whispers of last words
from the night's conversations
Still linger somewhere – ethereal
In a twisted life I have had.
Smoldering a need so alien so new, a need to be with you.

How you knelt and held me,
How you opened your heart,
The flow of words hit me so hard.
The depth and sincerity curled my skin,
I knew, for all that's true I was in, I knew I had fallen in.

You should know how in the heart
of a soul lost, wounded and scarred
You kindled hope, perhaps undeserved
But, I wouldn't rest it just there, I reckoned
I would walk till wherever this led, I would walk it till the end.