Pixels streaming like shooting stars
Artificial openings that are so disingenuous when I’ve seen the way your smile makes all light bulbs burst in jealousy from the light you radiate
“Just be yourself.”
The most honest advice to give.
No malice.
The hardest advice to take.
“Do they even know me?”
The calm sometimes doesn’t come after the storm.
Sometimes it sits and waits.
Slowly curling around toes
Casually slithering up to your belly
Nausea
Prancing up to your heart
Anxiety
Pridefully slinking to your throat
Tongue-tied as it swells like an angry ocean
And finally making rest in your cerebellum
I asked
Where it spreads out, limbs long, and smirking
This poison you willingly drink that is masked by sugar and ego
Let the glass engorged with the evil elixir that alerts you of your short comings shatter on the tile floor
Remove the blinking screen from your face that is slowly becoming a Shakespearean tragedy
Disconnect
Connect to eye contact that isn’t shielded by WiFi

Red beads wrapped around my lady legs

Red potato skins still crawling through Southern dregs

Red lipstick, too expensive for sad my two lips live

Red lights, stop signs. Oh how much I would give

To see you smile

And stay a while

Let's pretend we don't exist

Red burns from falling down

In those sweet eyes, I feel no lies

Take me, embrace me

Red, red, red

I get flashes of our first meeting

like airplanes you mistake for twinkling stars

covered in paint our glazed pupils locked

wooden steps that swayed like the curve of my back

your mouth halfway inside me at 6 am on a spring morning

or was it winter?

stumbling back into my arms in a place we call 'sanctuary'

And that's always it.

Why can I only look you dead in the eyes when they're crossing?

We could stopped the universe, because we do every time we kissed.  

Like we can't stop sipping

Hangovers like ropes around my head

What's going to happen when we wake up?

When the dust clears?

Why are we still torturing each other through rye flavored teeth?

Relief is paradox and a vicious cycle

Red beads wrapped around my lady legs

Red potato skins still crawling through Southern gravel

Red lipstick, too expensive for how too petty my two lips live

Read you to absolute filth when my mom asked who had wronged me recently and rang up your name like an unremembered child

Rooms full of furniture will still echo if you rage loud enough

when did your eyes turn from blue to grey?
what a beautiful grey
a cold grey
a wet October grey
an "I forgot my umbrella" grey
a "Should we stay home?" grey
a day consumed with nostalgic sadness grey
a familiar reminder of rejection grey
a hopeless new romance grey

as grey as the ash from your cigarettes
as grey as that woolen hat that I'd wear while I waited wondering when you'd wander home
as grey as my best shirt you stripped off of me on a grey night

i fell in love with a mixture of black, blue, and muddy pearl
it sparkled against me when the sky clouded up
and we kissed until our vision blurred

I don't remember how vivid colors were before you.

there will be an answer
we've walked too long
sweating
lost lashes and sore limbs

whisper to me
what's the code?
who do I need to know?

wake up
treble highs
teal pool water

barely recognizing home
scents and sense off kilter

just play me a lullaby
i'll find some solace in that.

wrapped around each other closer than sheets to a bed
fuzz. eyelashes. teeth. soft skin.
you completely disarm me.
i will give you all my guns
just grab my limbs.
envelop me.
the way your legs get tangled in my anatomy like a sapling
that's eager to grow larger.
pelvic bones crashing together so perfectly clumsy.
you are my ocean. my beach. my sun, sky, and stars.