do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.

Baptize me
All lace and white fabric on pale skin
You tasted like July the last time,
And the smoke has lingered ever since
You dyed your hair and cut off the dead ends
My fingers can barely recognize it now
Your attention explodes across my awareness
Like a shooting star, because for all of its brevity
It is ******* enthralling
You made a holy fool of me once
And here I submit, on my knees
To be enfolded in the judgement of the crown
You sigh like the wind in Appalachia
And sing like the old gospel choir
And you whisper in French in my ear
You don't know much, but it's more than me

Conceived in hazy agony
The path to the city of gold stretched endlessly into the mountains
My father walked it once, and I think I'll stay home
There is an eternity between each of my words
And in that space ghosts wait impatiently
For me to cave in
The American South is all ablaze
And two headed catfish swim the Ohio River
Appalachia's lullabies end as bitterly as they begin
Life comes together in fragments
And ephemeral cycles reach their waning stages
God took pity just this once, and the following day brought apocalypse
An ending fit for songs that would never be sung
So glorious they never could have saw it coming
But I'll drink to it regardless