Our mentalities are separate,

cautious.

We are of simple minds,

of hardened hearts,

not yet ready to believe in each other—

in ourselves.

And above, a black midnight

Reflected brilliantly upon the water;

a pool of ink.

The stars, dusted across the darkness.



We lunge, we dive, into

blackened pools of adrenaline and

nighttime.

The transformation hits us

like a wrecking ball;

like a wrecking ball,

numbness flows into us,

creeps unto us

as we stand, together,

the ink falling

from our shoulders

and skins;

from our judgments.

Our reflections are changed,

perhaps irrevocably.



And then the heat;

the heat.

A warm caress on our quivering skin,

a welcome silence to our chattering mouths,

now hushed, tired.

The taste of iodine, of laughter,

coats our dry, sticky lips as we

mute.

Our senses, now acute.



The sizzle and snap of

hot steam, cold breaths.

We taste, smell and now—

feel the sage, warming us.

And suddenly, out of the darkness,

I can imagine.

As if in a sunlit afternoon,

hot and humid.

Birds wings flash above brightly;

they flutter lightly, carefully extended,

beneath a robin’s-egg blue.



In the dark without a moon,

as our impurities and vanity

melt and collect at our dirt-covered fingertips,

we all extend our wings.

We all extend our wings and fly.

Trust the air. Feel the sky.

We are connected,

as if on a single wind.

Infinitely strong, yet perhaps

unseen.

Our skins are softened as we leave,

the breath of a story

still on our ears.

We breathe deeply a perfume-less air.

We flash our wings, now extended fully

without reserve

For all to see.

Today we heard a man’s voice
coming from the whip-cracking static:
he says  it’s not that expensive
to buy a star.
You laughed in chimes and told me
that there are some things
not worth owning. You own so many hearts,
but a star is a silly purchase.
A worthless nothing to you.

We lie together that night, a small hotel,
riverside highway on our way to the moon,
and your skin clutches mine
a hungry animal, fleshing out to my own,
all shivering lust. You are aloof, I know it, you
don’t even care. The lies of love
are on your face, I can feel it.
What I might trace there
if only I could find my fingertips,
tracing the contours of your lips.
“That diamond necklace I bought you
looks beautiful at night,” you say.
But honestly it’s choking me,
weighing me down as you breathe
these words into my lungs.
The hideous transgressions that limit
the capacity of your soul, and mine--
my heart, captured there, fleeting
until the next breath bursts.

I feel like them, all the rest,
the girls you pretended to love
the girl I am pretending will change you.
If they didn’t come back to you,
hungrier than before,
you didn’t do your job right.
It’s the way you think,
what I can see on you every day.
I may not be any different than the rest,
but I know better than the best of them.
Like now: I can see you, the heart of stone
the ice of your face on fire
as we move from room to
bone-white room.

In my sultry silver skin, bathed in moonlight,
we sat beneath those stars, and you said,
“I bought one for you, named it for you,
I will forever keep it for you.”
A ball of ice and gas and fire is no longer
a worthless nothing
so long as it spells l.o.v.e.
in nauseating simplicity, no effort
on your part. You don’t have to choke
the words down, cough them up,
until next year. But you’ll already have gone.
A star is finally worth something
because I will always be worth nothing.
I hate being ****** into this circadian rhythm,
a habitual love and lie. If only
I could look at you
without questioning,
if you own half the stars in the sky,
who the rest still shine for.

our love has been empty, useless.

our words flare up in color, but fall away cold. always.

tonight we smolder in stillness, alone in our decay—

sit in our silence that's no longer calm and open,

but broken: eden (our eden) is burning away again,

but this time, you can't say it's eve's fault.

when smoke curls around your words like

sultry translations that I don't understand, we begin burning.

it seems I am learning to stop believing

every silent, simmering word you say.

I throb and scream with every beat of silence,

but ache when your lies drop like hot stones into my heart.

my words of dissent shatter and scatter across the floor.

silence, again—but we are more broken now than even that.

so slide that way you slide,
so shy,
wanting mouth open
trying to overcome the
hideous transgressions that limit
the capacity of your heart, your  soul
so shallow and broken it seems
only to slither beneath me again
in a lustful dance,
a lilting trance, where I learn
again
to trust you
again, and suddenly, I want
nothing more than the
deepest reaches of your mouth,
your long arms like willow branches,
the way they wrap around me
in times when I no longer desire
a simple word, a celestial sign
that says, “This is our
circadian rhythm, darling,
it is a habitual love.”
Your words haunt your
fingertips, closer my love,
kiss the lips that have
spoken too deeply,
I run from this hatred
of myself for what I have
let you make me.
But you breathe me in like air,
and I can feel the pump of blood,
the rhythm of two hearts
beating together into one
bleeding together into one pool of
shivering lust.

Some hear rain. Some hear the cracking whip
that illuminates a star-dusted sky. Some
hear cold tremble of white fur, soft eyes, as
the intake of breath becomes softer with each.
Some hear the startle of the ants dwelling,
a swell of bodies together in fear,
as the tree bark cracks.
Some hear the gentle ***** of the quivering forest,
a harrowing descent into whiskey dark.
Some hear hollowed out emptiness
that rain makes when knocking on a tree,
inside smelling of pine and empty
nests. Safe here, safer, save her. Drip
drip goes the pine, as a thick gaze falls
upon a branch too far to reach.
Alone, where some hear soft crackling
of the fire embracing wood, she can hear
the stream of mumbled prayers from her to
the tawny owl to the dry-creak bed,
soaking into each crack like a parched breath.
Does she imagine she will ever leave?
still, be still, still be—here, always.
Some hear tired maples sleeping by
rivers, their roots flowing like smoke to
find something beautiful, yet lost.
Is it loneliness, she sees?
Do they wander without ever reaching?
The panther’s paws are placed
in the wet dust of morning.
The grass is dewy, soft under the
hard boot-tread of her feet.
She can wait until the stars align in
the saddle-shape of soft leather and emptiness.
She can wait to cry in the dawn, where
the grey is ugly and she is still broken.
But she is alone and lost in a patchwork quilt,
a soft sinew that will don a snowcoat soon.
But the night is long and she is endless,
her arms stretching to the treetops,
her lips brushing against weary memories
that she has her whole life left to uncover alone.

The mermaid they caught a few weeks back
is now quite fat, and rarely swims anymore.
She sits, lethargic, in her cage, her hair floating dully
along the surface of the oil clouded water.
I press my face against the glass, imagining childhood.
I can remember her weeks back.

She was new to our small town.
Her ******* supple, her stomach tanned and flat,
her tail long and lean, glistening with something
not quite entirely human, yet beautiful enough
to suddenly believe it belongs to us.
So we brought her to us, so she could never escape.
Our needy fingers, our hungry eyes
devoured her whole, kept her for our show.
So she showed off, enjoying inside the importance
of her magic in the eyes of children. Even the adults.
She remained passive, but wowed us with flips and
dips. She even understood us when we spoke, often
joining conversations half way through their wonder.
It just made us more in awe, more hopeful that
one day
we could be mermaids too.

But now she sits, broken yet more whole than ever.
Her ******* too full, her stomach stretched above her scales
which flake off in dull, rusted colors reacting with the glutton
in the water. We watch, our hands clenching handfuls
of popcorn, chips; our teeth grinding sweet buns, soft cookies.
Our hands reach for the camera in the pocket of too tight jeans,
feeling for memories that shouldn't be there.

Here, where the world is quiet
Listen to the silence that cannot
find it’s voice. To love that cannot
find the kiss. To understanding
that cannot comprehend compassion.
The world has tired
of these minutes turned hours
Withered petals of barren flowers
Broken shadows where people cower
And everything but rest.

Here, where slumber and dreams
drift into empty streets.
Wine-stained skin, drinking in the rain.
Stiff clothes and soft eyes,
trembling in the whiskey dark.
Spirits broken, only in death
will chests ache and fall with relief
Eyes strong and grave with sleep
and finally too weak to weep—

Here, where the fall leaves
venture into the wind,
that bends the grass in a bow
to the pretense of kings and queens
buried beneath the trees
that drink late autumn honey,
of old weapons found too late
Hard eyes, cruel smiles,
a man walks free, forgetting
Once he tires of laughter.

And here, together with you
our lips clinging to each other
our backs bowed in the erroneous light
I cannot escape my love for you.
I’m so afraid of the hurt
again. I want to give myself over
no pretenses, no reservations
Let your damaged heart
mend my broken soul.
“I’m scared,” I whisper
of love that doesn’t last forever.
Of this hurt that might.

But here, there is only me, and thoughts
I don't want to be alone with.
I want to point a silver arrow at the blue sky,
let it rip into the heavens, and bring God down.
I want to meet His eyes
from His spot on the ground, arrow protruding
from a heart that doesn't beat. I want
to ask him one foolish thing.
He will let me.
“Why do hearts break in silence?”
And his answer, I know, will be:
“Selfishly, we don’t beat as one.”