He said he liked her style
and her pianist fingers.
She told him that he could paint her
onto canvas, in shades
of cinnamon and ivory.

He laughed at her trembling hands
as she sat there, dressed in naught
but peonies and wild roses.
She scowled at his impudence
and then laughed
at the absurdity of it all.

She sat there and he told her
hold still
with a smile that flashed
across his eyes like quicksilver.

She watched him create poetry
with strokes of umber and chartreuse,
cerulean and scarlet.
He pulled the shadows from her eyes
and placed them into a fixed state of being.

She watched the metamorphosis of scars
into moonlit fault lines and
freckles into blips of smooth paint.

He transformed her pale outline
into a sensuous display of smooth gradients
and colors deep enough to make men weep.
He captured the penumbra of sorrow
and spread it across her painted eyes.

As he anointed the canvas
with delicate finishing touches,
She dressed in a paint-spattered shirt
and marveled at the uncanny likeness.

They sat and watched the paint dry
as he rubbed the knots from her shoulders
and kissed strained tendons and ligament
beneath innocuous flesh,
as she tapped rhythms into his hands.

He is no longer hers to consume.
He belongs now to the kingdom of earthworms
and a darkness that swallows all traces of light.
He took with him the chunk of her
that knew how to love as a human
and left her with shirts devoid of his form
and gradually losing his scent,
fragmented memories that slip
through fingers like sand,
and a room full of paintings
that she cannot bring herself
to uncover.

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.

Like love, these words
are just a means to an end.
Writing cryptic phrases
beneath the guise
of beautiful colors
and sun-stroked flesh.

These words are just
dark matter, from
an empty head.
Senseless chatter
in a poet's bed.

I watch you turn away,
as if you can't remember
how we got here.
I watch your hands
for a sign- there is
nothing but godless regret
and cold fingers
stroking my ego.

These words are not
what I meant to say.
Blue smoke curls and folds
and it is more than me;
More than this winter note,
I wrote for you.
My hands shake
and the walls murmur
with disapproval.

There is love in these words
but they come from a place
that transcends darkness,
where sorrow bleeds crystalline
and fills up every groove and sulcus.
These words are no good,
and my lips tremble
as apologetic syllables
go tumbling across the threshold.

These words are finite,
the end of an era.

and i’m glad just to be
floating around in your atmosphere,
because the view is so lovely
from here. your face like marble,
carved out by the the wind,
and I dare you to bend
like winter twigs or golden light,
one of those things, you never could hold.

one of those things were never here at all.
nor the curve of the wineglass,
as your fingers twisted through air,
and the pieces scattered like mercury,
gleaming as bright as your teeth;
licking for something more tender,
something more meek.

i steal flashes of light and pin them
to the sun’s greedy eye for you,
like the brink of extinction.
it is more like a rebirth; the trees burning
and heaving their limbs like lungs.
it is a changing of seasons, and
it is all, it is all that I can do.

i linger at portholes shaped like your eyes,
gorged somewhat with nostalgia,
but i can move on through the chemical highs
and the lovely dramatics of reds on a stereo blue.

i can stand on things that are uneven.
oh, see how we’ve grown.

You were like the flowers
dying on my kitchen table.
Wilting away, and even so,
gifting me with flashes of color
and the unceremonious bloom
of a forgotten bud.

You were like Billy Holiday
at 3am on my busted record player;
just the slightest hiccup
in your melancholy.

You were an insufferable
embodiment of self-doubt,
nearly tangible in the
sun-starved days of winter.

You were an enigma,
plain and simple,
as nondescript as the fog
before a sunrise in September.

perpetually human,
romanticizing the madness
of a world that's come undone.
oil paintings of the sea
hang upon the walls of our minds
and we marvel at the sorrow
mimicking beautiful colors.

cryptic fingers stroke our egos
and tell us that we will persevere,
that we are the ******
of evolutionary prose.
lunar rays beam down on us,
shrouding us in a gentle glow
and we almost believe
that we could be infinite.

You come and you go,
repetitive dream motions
driving a picture of
your face
into my little mouse heart.

Apparition of sleepless nights,
you smile- drop your bags
on my bedroom floor.
I nursed your broken bones
and kissed your fingertips,
crushing the passage of
time in my small hands
like so many impatiens.

And then came the storm clouds,
and you traveling north-
leaving no trace
of what once was;

only memories
like ashes
dissolving
in the rain.

crawling, creeping,
slowly shrinking back
into skin and nails
and bones and hair
and glistening ectoplasm.

backwards thinking because of
infinity eyes and a lovely
spine that was never there
to begin with.
and, I smile,
but its always your
smile

even when I tell myself
that the geraniums
cannot cry forever, or
that the sun can only eat
so many shadows
before it
explodes.

but it's difficult
when everything
around you
is so beautiful;

beautiful and fated
for disaster
and decay.

i haven't written in months.
i'm terrified of prying out
the demons in my solar plexus
and birthing them into something
as tangible as ink against paper.

the things that i miss, they would
have me shaking in my metaphorical boots.
things like your socks on my floor,
or your words hanging like ornaments
in the sunlight above my bed.

the things that i can never get back,
like lost time and fleeting moments
of untouched beauty;
a look, a crippling smile,
the honesty of it all
could sink ships or worse.

ossifying words into something tangible,
a task fit for earthworms or kings,
leaves me wanting more, or maybe less,
waiting for something bone-deep
and overflowing with light.

someday it will find me.

I said your name aloud
in the candlelight,
like a small séance
for unrequited love.

I waited for you to haunt me
with your voice and quiet smile,
and felt a ghost of you
brush my cheek.

But when I reached for you
the candles only flickered
and the room was screaming
with unbearable silence.

fall asleep in a strange place,
the moths are quivering
beyond a thin membrane of glass,
mistaking fluorescent light
for that of the moon

devour the air of an unforeseen tragedy
unfolding within your aura,
lying silent beneath the sheets.
the sun will kiss you in the morning,
in mourning, as you clutch the banister
for a pseudo-sense of balance
as the rug is pulled from under your feet
and colors meld together
until you can't see straight
and your mind is dumb as hematite.

strangle the doubts bubbling up
inside your brain
and fill the void with lithium
and mindless chatter,
an ******* onslaught of stuttering normality.
you are Atlas
shedding the weight of the earth.

**** it, you may as well be
another faceless face in the sea of glimmering
white noise and chemical delirium.

give in, give up,
assimilate
with your filthy brethren..
living is so much easier
when your head is empty.

spring seeps in
with great grey rains
and a shifting sun
that could try harder.

small things whisper
and rush to hide
beneath rotting wood
and ancient bricks,
squirming there
in soil that keeps
and breathes life
in April.

green shoots glance
tentatively through
hazy morning light,
pushing through
earthworms and detritus
to gift me one
small wink
as I brush the earth
from my human hands.

it is a great exchange
from the vast frozen sheets
of glittering death
and pale winter sun
into the world of the living.
it is an awakening
of sleeping seeds
and tendrils

and it is more like
a rebirth,
as my limbs stretch
and bloom with the trees
and a quiet smile once again
comes to rest
on this gratuitous
winter face.

I linger at skin that clings
and hollow bones
that catch in the moonlight,
pausing at mirrors
that look more like
still-life paintings-
an empty gold vase
over here where my heart
used to reside,
a fresh green sprig
where there were once arms.

There is a sickness
sleeping in my hypothalamus,
heaving with every breath,
every step, every heartbeat.
I try to look at it
and it slips like sand
through my closed mind.

I smile, and it's not
my smile anymore.

the room is empty
as a smile, walls that stand
blank as eyes waiting for truth
as i fumble for stolen words
and like children they
spill from outstretched palms.
a gift to the gutters,
a gift to the gods
who laugh in my wake,
inviting me to whiten my bones
among them, among their
house of trees and their
all-knowing shadows.

landlocked words that sit
stagnant in my muscles,
whimpering in cold corners
and clamoring at whitewashed windows.
i want them,
not the labor, not the anesthetics,
but the small, pink-lipped
baby of them.

words like garbage, words
like paper Mache, or as
silent as both.
they are maddening, porcelain,
but they are mine to nurture,
mine to cure,
mine to hold.

I am not strong
as synaptic junctions
stutter and fail
and blood pulses hot
against thin arterial walls.

I cram sticky little secrets
into the space between
the mirror and the wall
and put on my best
**** eating grin-
hiding behind words
that slip and lukewarm
nihilism.

I am not strong
as outlines blur into
shimmering watercolor
and my hands grip the railing
for a fleeting sense of
functional equilibrium.

I give you only the things
that I deem worthy of letting go-
only the meek and sickening
remembrances of insanity,
the things that I can
romanticize aloud.

I am not strong
as my brain fills with
black thoughts and
death wishes like saccharine.

I am not strong
but you've never asked me to be.
You know that muscles pull
and that I only have the strength
to push.
You haven't tried to iron out
the lines of my smile yet
nor made demands
or promises that lie unkept.

I am not strong,
but perhaps
there is something
more.

She sits in a cracked vinyl chair
in a room full of octogenarians,
as gunsmoke plays quietly
in the background-
James Arness is saying something
about the only woman
he's ever loved.

She digs her fingernails
into her palms and stares
at the floor with its repeating
faded patterns.
She doesn't belong here,
matching pain and numbness
to lifespans triple her own.

The nurse calls her name
and she stands so slowly,
bones creaking, wavering slightly
as she waits for the fog to clear.
She pads softly down the dim hall
and they leave her in a quiet room,
quite alone.

The doctor calls her a pretty young thing,
asks her what she is doing here.
He gives no answers,
only more medications
and a sticky sweet smile
meant to placate.

She walks away into the sunlight
and a song plays on repeat in her head:
I Know it's Over.

His niceties were inherent,
as were his empty bed
and the empty chair
placed next to his
at the small cafe table.

His women were nice,
clean and crisp,
but they only undressed
in the dark,
and they never
stayed the night.

He woke up
alone
and reaching
for no one;
praying for nocturnes
that never end
or a noose
that wouldn't slip,
when there was
nothing else
to be done.

Hey, I think about you
nearly every day,*
he says
through the telephone.

And I stutter and falter
to tell him that I
do not think of him
at all.

I was born without
eyes, ears, or
a heart.

Listless airwaves
wreak havoc across
my sun scorched
landscape.

I bend into
snapdragon
position,
lilt like August wheat
and regroup,
regenerate
my amphibious
limbs.

But I am not bold
or strong
or any of those things
that you said
when you were trying
to talk me back
from the precipice
of my jagged mind.

I am pigeon toed
and meek,
stuffing sticky sweet
secrets
into the cracks
of my palms
and turning my face away
from the lights.

I am not,
I am not
any of those things
that you said,

but I'm trying;

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.

I told you that I missed you
as I grew nostalgic for things
that were never mine
in the first place.

Memories committing verbicide,
bringing to mind your voice
singing love songs in the moonglow,
and censoring the ugliness
of those words you really said.

I told you I missed you
because the words were festering
in my brain and filling my lungs
with air too heavy to breathe.

I told you that I missed you
because I've finally figured out
that all of your little injustices,
all of those things I should've called treason,
don't even begin to match
the chasm you left in my world
when you left.

You are missing from me
and I am a ghost without you.

I told you all of it,
déjà vu bitter on my tongue,
and I blinked as the words floated off
into the space between our lips.

Too little, too late,
you said,
*your love
is only ashes.

it's astonishing
how swiftly
this disease moves.

it's gotten to be
this familiar pattern,
an ugly ebb and floe-
agonizing stretches
of nothing, just numb silence
and tense conversations,
with brief reprieves
of manic glittering highs.
it builds and builds
until it bursts, and not
in any extraordinary way.
it's usually while
engaged in some menial task
like brushing my teeth
or eating a turkey sandwich,
and suddenly it's suffocating me
and my hands are shaking
and all of my words are gone.
this is the phase
of delicious self-loathing
and bone deep sadness,
where it almost feels good
just to feel something real-

until i'm spinning out,
heaving out months of nothing
in back-breaking sobs
in the middle of the week
on my lunch break
and they're all asking
what's wrong
with their faces
******* up into
genuine concern
and, ****,
they've almost
found me out.

i regroup,
smile like i mean it
and say i'm getting help;
let emptiness consume
as i dive into the grey.

I feel out of place
in the summertime-
oversized and awkward,
forcing smiles that
crack and peel
and pretending
that I am bold
that I am unaffected
that I am ready
as I shove black thoughts
back down into
silent fissures.

Now fall is creeping in
with great grey plumes
of september clouds
and all of those slippery
dark thoughts bubble up
and out to settle
in every corner.

And I vacillate
from mind-numbing
sorrow and overwhelming
exhaustion to
glittering highs
from the beauty of it all-
the contrast is acutely
melancholic and
sweet at once.

I pour out feelings
that stick to my canvas
and make love
in shallow pools
of moonlight
and smile at something
that feels real
and I am bold
I am unaffected
I am ready.

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.

when the water calls, go.
even if it's eight degrees
and your boots slip
as you crunch across
the sand and snow
towards waves that roar
and crash like metal shavings.

even as the wind whips
your unsuspecting face,
sending showers of
frozen sand to play
amongst your eyelashes.

even as your feeble eyes flicker
and try to absorb all of this
spectacular frozen wrath
before the wind swallows up
your air and forces you
to look away, gasping
with ecstasy,

smiling like a maniac
as the tears freeze
on your porcelain cheeks.
my god, you've never
felt so alive.

I miss you
sometimes
just enough
so that it hurts.

When I feel like
I'm living in limbo,
one half step away
from falling apart,
I think of you
as a panacea
for all of the quiet thoughts
and dead stares.

When I find myself
painting canvases black
at three in the morning
and pressing my nails
into my wrists
just to feel
something,
I wish you were here
to coax me into bed
and kiss me
like you never did.

I miss you,
selfishly and
shamelessly.

And it twists
and slides through
my fingers like paint-
beautiful useless emotion.

You took the words
right out of my mouth
and then shoved them
down my throat.

And to you,  
it's just an afterthought,
a nod into space;
but I'm standing here
breathing oceans of static
in the small space
between us;
trying to fill the void.

You didn't hear the love
spilling out from the spaces
and cracks between my words.
You couldn't hear the apologies
in my silence.
You didn't feel the way
I held your name
on the tip of my tongue,
and really, I don't blame you.

If only to appease you,
I'd crawl back to the shore
and drift back out to sea,
dissolve into a memory.

I just hope that you might
remember me
the way I used to be.

Regrets take root
in my decomposing heart
and fruiting bodies take hold
of my brain, like
cordyceps without a purpose-

Leaving this pale exoskeleton,
devoid of light or sound.
I shuffle through empty rooms
that once rang with your laughter,
staring at the floor as if I could
divine answers from spaces
that you once tread.

And I think I'd like to learn
how to escape this state
of suspended animation,
how to feel something again,
but my body is so heavy
with this sorrow
that produces no tears,
no bloodshed,
only a foreboding miasma
that sits at the edge of my thoughts-

A death sentence
to the woman who tries
to hold oceans
inside a thimble.

You live only in memories
for me, memories
and ashes on the floorboards.
It's strange to think
that you're out there
living and breathing
and moving about
in a world that I'm not
a part of.

I think of songs that we sang
bruises we made
broken guitar strings
ragged throats
disembodied words
wasted glances
and it all just sits there
misty and faint
in little corners of my mind
and I don't miss you at all.

the human condition
is rarely terminal.

she slides her finger
along a seashell's iridescence
and takes a four-second breath
when it's edges break skin-
undecidedly feeling like a rag doll;
devoid of happy moving hands
and a barrage of stitches
where her mouth once parted.

it has never been enough,
gliding over this shining meniscus
with feet painted rose gold
and eyes propped open with twigs.

alas, she crosses her toes
and falls into the surf,
awakening slate grey waves
and a smile full of sand.

I used to think
that everything would be
easy;
that my pallid brain conveyed
some intricate foreshadowing
of a life unseen, but beheld
like landlocked love.

What I know now is this:
love is a place
without maps or atlases,
where the sea smolders
gracefully into
the horizon,
and my eyes are too tired
to look past the shore.

It's the middle of the afternoon
and the street heaves
beneath the weight of
so much ordinary existence.

The leaves fall steadily,
matching their pace to
the unceasing rain and
painting striking contrasts
of crimson and umbre
against the grey sky.

The woman next door
is screaming
and the grief and terror
that catches at her throat
is palpable amidst this
ordinary scene.

Solid things suddenly seem surreal
when they are choked in sorrow,
and I feel like a statue
dialing 911 with marble fingers
as she runs from demons
that will plague her forever.

The dispatcher gives directions,
and step by step,
I try to recreate feelings
like compassion and empathy,
as if that could be enough
in this startlingly raw moment
to calm someone who is
coming apart at the seams.

She won't look at me,
she is not here.
I can feel the grief
in her voice like porcelain,
and I can taste it-
like ice chips.
But I'm not here either,
I'm just holding this emotion
in my hands, numb.

The ambulances come
and take her lover away
beneath a white sheet
and I can hear the police radios
shrieking suicide
as everyone stands
on the sidewalk,
enjoying the show.

And I retreat into
my quiet home,
still holding this
porcelain grief
like a talisman.
I sit down
at the kitchen table
and turn it round and round,
trying to understand
where it fits
in this ordinary
Wednesday afternoon.

I stand ankle deep
in the cool, rushing river
and watch the minnows
kissing my toes
with starlight quickness,
licking for some sort of
sustenance.

I listen to the siren song
of the forest,
slow and verdant
like the echo of fronds
unfurling delicately
in the mottled sunlight
and aching with longing.

I let the shadows move
through me,
leaving a human shaped
space
where maybe once
there beat a slow heart
lazily trickling blood
through intricate maps
of veins and capillaries.

I let the water rush past me
and I think of hands
folding and unfolding
and flowers wilting
and rejoining the dirt
in a poetic display
of circularity.

Time oozes forward
with a finite smirk,
leaving a lucent film
of memories
that haunt me,
of smiles that are
lost to me.

There is laughter now,
ringing eerily
amongst the trees
like a foreign language
in a land of silence
and shadow creatures.

The river runs through me
and I am paralyzed
by the singularity
of this moment.

Kiss me,
I'm sick.

I love you,
I hate you,
in 30 second intervals.
I shapeshift
in ten syllables
with no pauses.

You think that this time
it'll be different,
that I won't run.
And I flinch
because you don't
deserve this.

The truth is
that I'm already
dreaming of
wide open spaces
and books with blank pages.

bodies awash with
sin and self loathing-
we fold into mutual
affections
like water.

pinpricks of light
force holes through
the curtains
and I hold your gaze,
mathematical
and steady.

my thoughts stumble
over broken lips
to bleed out into
the space between us
like a spring pig
at the slaughterhouse

and you smile,
trace my jaw
with your index finger,
but the words just
hang there
with the dust
glittering in the light.

touch me,
i'm real.
forgive me,
i'm ill.

It's two in the morning,
it's always two in the morning
when nothing seems right
and your smile haunts
and lingers in my periphery.

It's two in the morning
and one candle flickers
in the corner of this
dark and hallowed room.
Etta James plays on repeat
and any stranger looking in
might attribute this scene
to something like love.
Maybe it's halfway there,
as he says my name
in between breaths that take
most of my air, and heartbeats
that drum staccato.
Maybe, just for a moment,
as I shut my eyes
and scream into the darkness,
filling the spaces beneath my nails
with the flesh on his chest,
and my whole body is aglow
with inescapable pleasure-
maybe I love him in that
brief reprieve.

It's two in the morning
and I'm rolling onto my side
over sticky white sheets.
He looks at me
as the singular flame
dances and casts shadows
that paint the arch of my hips
against the stucco,
and he tells me
that he loves me,
and I can't figure it out.
Maybe it's because the light
is so forgiving,
softening this look
of bone deep sorrow
and sickening nostalgia
into something like affection.

Or maybe you were always right
when you called me a sociopath
or a shameless narcissist.
Maybe I like playing with fire-
getting as close to love as possible
before disappearing, before
committing one more satisfying
act of self sabotage.

It's two in the morning,
and he's looking at me
like he means it
but I can't stomach it.
I've been asking for it
and now the words
just sit there, shining
in the candle light
and they're sickening
and nothing feels right
because he's made the same
mistake as all the others-
he isn't you.

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.

You live in the spaces
between sleep and 2 am.
And I'm stuck there
clinging to memories
that fade like water colors.

Things like your hands
pressed against my body
and those kisses that we
took for granted
in the dark rooms
we called ours.
Things like your eyes
when you needed me
enough to admit it,
and your laugh
breaking my grey silences.

Those small fragments
are ingrained into my brain,
holding tight and overgrown
like lichens to a stone.

It's the things that slip,
like our last kiss,
or those songs
you were always writing
while I was thinking
you could have tried harder
to make us right.
The small details,
your freckles and scars,
and even the hue of your eyes,
are harder and harder
to recall.

Night after night,
I try to conjure images
of your poltergeist smile
and question my sanity
as I get stuck on your eyes-
were they green or were they blue?

And I try to remember the truth
of it all- five years of ugly truths
that beg to be ignored,
but I force them in
and look them in their
pallid faces.

The words sting just as much now
as they did then,
when I let them.
And when I finally close my eyes,
I can still feel your hands
creating bruises like fine art.

Silence twists around my throat,
serpentine in the inky light,
as the paint sticks
and dries beneath my fingernails.

Ideas claw at my solar plexus
threatening sycophancy
treason and madness
in a world of stale passion
and stuttering ignorance.

They wake up and shower,
****, shave, apply the mask
with painstaking detail.
They die before they reach thirty
and go on walking about
as if they know the secret
to eternal bliss-
it's possible that they do,
after all.

I mean, consider the alternative-
an artist haunted by the colors
that live in a winter sunrise,
a nomad reaching for no one
as he chases the sun
across mercurial landscapes,
a writer living through ink
because there's no other way
to quell the storms,
a human shedding expectations
for beautiful things
that will always be broken.

I am not a gambler
or a mystic or any sort of
self-righteous prophet
but there are sometimes
these small things
that glimmer with certainty.

Small things that pinpoint
the ****** of everything
in the deep, vast universe
converging on this
slim chance.

Its the sensation that
the words are there
on the tip of my tongue,
dangerously close
to slipping out into space
where you might hear them
and love me,
love me too.

I've run myself ragged
chasing phantoms
and false prophets.
Willing ignorance
and somber idolatry
runs amok throughout
the trails that I leave
and I am not sorry.

I will not settle
for cheap emotions
and halfway love.
I need to feel it
radiating from every pore,
overflowing from each
long, pale fingertip
like sweet honey.

I need it to be real,
so thick that it's tangible,
instilling feelings akin
to those that lilacs
and wild lupine stir.

I need it to be
you and I
moving onward
and upwards
as two birds
in unison.

I need it to be
breathtakingly
ordinary.

The genius sheds his skin
beneath the weeping yew trees.
The stars bleed symphonies
into the night sky
and he is whole,
for the first time in his life.

The girl shakes little flakes of doubt
from the tips of her shaking fingers,
allowing it to fall to the forgiving earth.
She loves with an empty head
as chemical reactions combust
within her mortal veins,
and she is whole
for the first time in her life.

We are edging toward
the crest of December-
it looms, unforgivingly
over the horizon.

My mind is filled
with thick paints
and heavy smoke.
You stand askance
like some forgotten
silhouette,
begging for reprieve
in the waning moon glow.

I drink a little more,
and create tangible feelings
on tepid surfaces-
working like a madman
to keep the wolves at bay.

And I care about you
a little bit less
every day.

It's always either too much
or not nearly enough.
I cringe at the echo
of voices that carry
and words that slip
over my teeth
like molasses,
but the silence
can be deafening
in an empty room.

I vacillate between
thoughts that fill up spaces
like black balloons
and smiles that sink ships-
twisting between
tepid emptiness
and emotions that press
on all of my soft spots,
intent on seeping out
through my pores
like little pinpricks
of madness.

Caught somewhere between
a *****, a child, and a housewife;
I want deft hands to
wrap up all of my
loose ends
and in the same breath
I want to shave my head
and curl into cold corners.
I want to run through
fluorescent meadows
and twirl round in cotton skirts
before receding into
the bleak landscapes of my mind.
I want to make him breakfast
and fold his laundry into hearts-
then get drunk on cheap wine
and **** like that's what bed springs
were made for.

I want to say the words
that are festering inside
of my worm-eaten skull,
I want to see the disgust
on their contorted faces,
but on the other hand,
isn't it nice to be a pretty face;
seen, but never heard.

I want it all,
I want none of it.

slip like silt,
just as you always did,
into smooth discordance-
leaving knives disguised
as words synonymous with love
pressed against my throat.

fold like origami cranes
and take flight when
the monsters emerge
from the spaces between
the floorboards,
when you look at me
and see a stranger.

I don't blame you.

romanticizing the images
of clenched fists
and bloodshot eyes,
I twist around my vices
like a serpent.

I wanted the idea.
You and I, nothing too grand;
just this simple love,
the likes of which
you could feel in your cells
and in your bones.

I wanted a love
where you'd bury me
so that the ache
of missing you
wouldn't sit inside
my chest like a stone.

And now we talk
like old friends,
and you still look at me
with that smile
and it makes me queasy,
how far removed these bodies are
from the ones we shared
in convoluted memories.

I don't blame you.

*****

Just a word like any other,
you spew it into the dark air
and hope that it will stick.
After all, shouldn't we all
be marrying our high school sweethearts
and ******* in the dark
to settle into bone numbing
missionary pleasure,
just like the good book says?

And if you're not married,
shouldn't you be knitting
or biding your time
silently *******
in an empty house,
willing God to shut the **** up
as you ******?

I'd rather be *******
in the moonlight,
in dimly lit offices,
on cliche sunset strewn beaches;
dancing naked in rivers
and sprawling over
sun-streaked sheets
ripe with leftover love.

Radiant heat seeps
from my wide eyes
to my long fingers
to my small *******
to the arch of my spine
to my uneven toes,
and, my god, isn't this
what it feels like
to be alive?

You can take your Sunday best
and your mewling children,
your whitewashed walls
and your plastic sofas.
I'd rather
be wholly, phenomenally
woman- shedding eons
of contempt,
laughing like Caligula
over the power that something
as simple as this body
that I carry around
can wield.

The wind is a scream
tonight
or a quick breath
upon the solid lip
of the quarter-filled wine glass.
It haunts the eaves
of my empty house,
stalks the corners of my loneliness.

This bedroom is a recurring scene
well-worn and moth-eaten-
the cat flickering in the lamplight;
the plants climbing the walls
in search of a light;
the sharp click of the furnace
as bitter cold December
creeps in over the windowsill.

Familiar, familial,
like the dichotomy of flesh
and a mind with sharp edges;
of soft sun kissed curves
and this brittle winter heart.

in dreams we split
like atoms,
heaving out words
that seek truth
and glances
like knives.
funny little things
float behind my eyelids
as though
they have a right.

hazy sunlight
seeps in through
his basement window
and my mossy eyes
flicker and expand,
stealing shadows
of his sleeping form-
there is truth
in freckles and
pale blue veins
that twists and sings
until I'm tongue tied
leaning on a syllable.

we make love
like thieves,
hanging delicate
ideas from the ceiling
to clear a space
in his king sized bed
for something more,

for something real-
it flows through my veins
and drips from my fingers,

something like love.

You stitched your name
upon the black walls
of my mind,
casting shadows
of folded hands
and unmentionable
fallacies
over the wide open spaces
in the whites of my eyes.

and I cringed
at your fingertips;
wilting
like the frost bitten crocuses
in my neglected garden;
receding into the relative safety
of silence,
soft as the echo
of an empty room,
bitter as a bird
who has forgotten
how to sing,
enduring
as the memories
of your hands
around my throat.