When I wake cold
With frostbitten lips and shaky hands
Crooked fingers
Petal-pink knuckles
The shadows speak to me softly

They talk of the moon and the lights that outshine her
Every twinkling star that dances across the hills
Each speck of gold and white filled with laughter
The red and blue that swim among them
Adorned in raindrops and scarlet flowers

They talk of the view from the tallest edifice
The way the ocean waves lap against the shoreline
The people that drift by
Gleeful and dejected

The warm yellow hue of the sky before dawn
Every beast that nestles in the earth
Each glow that dims before bed

They grasp at my skin
Wrapping around my silhouette
“Please,” they murmur
“Don’t forget to turn the lights out”

Though eternity is just a word
And our lives but fleeting moments
Will you still spend those seconds with me?

Somewhere, interwoven with sounds and sentences
Caught between each letter
Resting our weary heads on each silence

Drifting among consonants
Hanging on to every vowel
Every emphasis and pause
Ignorant of our inevitable punctuation

Though eternity is just a word
And our lives but fleeting moments
Please spend your last few moments with me

I speak to you in prayers and far off looks
Every glance up into the sky or final thought before I drift to sleep
Every gust of wind that steals my voice and carries it up to heaven

I speak to you at the loneliest hour
When the sea of earthly stars drowns out those up above
And the coyotes howl almost as much as I did

I speak to you softly
Every word filled to the brim with sorrow and longing and yearning for a you that you never became
So much so that they overflow and spill out of my mouth taking my thoughts right with them

I speak to you like a river to its mountain
Dormant volcano turned barren land
Decorated with snow and ashes and trees I couldn’t protect

I speak to you with every *** of coffee I brew in the morn’
Every time that I wake and every kind word I say to myself
Because I wish that’s how you had spoken to me, too

I count my steps
So I won’t bleed out
And so you won’t start to hate me

I count them
So the world will stop
And all that’s left is me

I count them
Because I breath in colors
But colors don’t know how to speak

I count my steps
Because it’s not quite as lonely
When colors are walking beside me

I count them
Like it's the only thing
That's ever been important to me

I count them
As if it'll shield their eyes
24 hours 7 days a week

Vast open ocean
You call out to boats from afar
Hoarse voice and tired eyes

My mind’s fracturing into repeating patterns
Patterns of life and words I do not know
People I have yet to see
Breathing in equations and out various numbers
Numbers with no meaning
Sparse and erratic

Splintering sentences and irrational answers
Decimals
Quotients
Products
Products that cannot be expressed
Quotients that can never possibly be fathomed
Decimals to infinity
Never repeating
But repeating that same set of numbers
1 through 9 in every shape and form
Spiraling into the abyss

Unifying everything
Yet moving so fast
So far
That it all falls away
Quantum mechanics
General relativity
Are nothing in the face of this infinite knowledge
Infinite numbers
Infinite death
Death to these hands
Death to these atoms
Death to every particle of light that collapsed from a wave
Death of the universe

Death of me