unseen melodies buzz like cicadas
borne out into the velvet night,
filling up my ears and eyes
with beautiful blind fervor
until you bury me
and the honeysuckle sings,

denying everything I thought
resembled truth.

I have had bits of my heart taken,
pinched tight between greedy fingers
and shining white incisors
just to be squandered between cold sheets
and walls without windows.

I have given small pieces of myself
in a subtle show of willing naïveté
only to watch them wilt and die
without patient hands to tend to them.

I have lost so many essential parts
that there's not much left to give-
everything is mathematical
and there is no pain in letting go.
I am an expert in the field of
cool, calculated detachment.

But then there was you.
you came padding in softly,
asking for nothing,
taking nothing.
I gave you only
what I had the strength to,
and for the first time,
I could see the pieces
blooming and thriving
as they crawled over the trellises
of your wandering heart.

The empty spaces fill
with shadows of your voice
and a glimmer of your eyes
when you're smiling

and for the first time,
I am whole.

I hide in plain sight,
giving small pieces
of these patchwork thoughts
crawling in cold circles
inside of this silent skull.

I only allow myself
the safe, silent pieces-
the ones that won't offend
or be misunderstood.
and all of those
lecherous little things,
those things that might
make them think too much
or feel too much,
gather and swell within
my eyes
my ears
my mouth

until my entire atmosphere
is clouded with these things
reverberating quietly
in the spaces between my tongue
and my teeth,
moving with molecular force
until they become too heavy
to carry around,

until they start to die,
calmly resigning themselves
to an unfulfilled purpose.

I skirt the edges of humanity,
a lone wolf, incalculable
in silent black dresses that flutter
and colossal ideas that squirm,
yearning to see themselves
reflected back in the moonlight.

You shift on my horizons,
a quiet place amidst the swell
of violent noise and clenched teeth,
and something in you keeps
drawing me back- a magnetism.
I walk amongst your leaves,
feel your scattered light,
and it is calm. It is home.

You see me, not the smiling
daguerreotype that I paste up,
but deeper- inky black and serpentine,
with feelings that swell
and burst like balloons.

We tread lightly over the bones
of things we've left unsaid,
our eyes reflecting mirror images
of words that swim and satiate
this primal thirst, a spark
of unconventional
connectivity.

Wasted days hang like corpses
in the five second pause
between our lips
and thick melancholia spreads
through my bones
with thoughts of
what should have been.

I want to tell you that I'm sorry,
but that's not quite right-
I want to give you the oceans
that press against my seams
and bend with weighted remorse.


I want to tell you that I've missed you,
but that's not quite right, either.
you have been missing from me
and I've been sticking these leftover pieces
together with chewing gum
and bits of dental floss,
blindly trying to recreate
a feeling from shadows and memory.

I want to tell you that I've changed my mind,
but this one sits like a lump in my throat.
I haven't changed my mind
because it's never really left you.
I've been looking through this camera obscura
at all of the things I thought I knew
and I missed the ghost of an idea,
patiently waiting for an eloquent realization-

It's always been you.

the trees whisper
rustling, gilded intonations-
spilling secrets like honey
into the productive blue sky.
sunlight lurches through the trees
and cracks my foolish skull,
sending all of the thoughts
I had left alone in there
spilling over the golden
dappled forest floor.

you seep into my periphery,
delicate and half formed
amongst the moss and the earthworms.
I smile at the exoskeletons of
decaying memories;
crawl, crustacean-like,
sifting for something more tender-

dredging up phantom images
that flutter lazily across my eyelashes
and come to rest in greedy palms.
breathless mirth
and incorrigible melancholy
commingle in your shadow
and hold me fast.

you and I live and breathe
in the same stratosphere
and I don't quite know how
to let it go.

I miss you, and the words
twist around my fingers
like a rosary, pausing
at the accidental stutter
of my naked heart.

Lately I've thought
that I was becoming
quite skilled at building walls
and burning bridges.
It starts to feel natural
after you do it so many times,
with every new lover.
new beginnings
always looked so appealing.

And then something shifted
as you smiled at me;
and I panicked as I felt
the walls crumbling
and something like love
seeped in and held me fast.

I let the words that sit
festering in my brain
pour out into the space
between our lips
and you drank them in
like water,
gifting me with
sweet repose
like an inconspicuous
land mine.