a combine harvester trudges down our narrow street
walls tall and encompassing
a tractor chasing after it in a crawl
and i feel like watching a mammoth passing
such is the human nature
not human at all

been thinking of you lately,
every thought of you spoonfed to me on a hot summer breeze.
the kind that makes you exhale extra hard, racing for the next breath.

i crush the lavender sitting in my vase every evening
with my bare hand, just enough until it reaches my nose.
it doesn't make me think about a hand around your throat,
but it permeates the air just as sweet.

the fresh and rotten cherries knock on my window the next evening,
and i'm still looking for you between the mirage lines.

i open the window, and it's as sugary as a cherry pit.
no, not that one, the pit in my stomach.
the butterflies welcome the rotten core, a cannibal feast.

if you knocked on my door the next day i'd
imagine it as something like a little bit of both.
a pit in my stomach and a hand around your throat.

your hair smells like an unaired room from bygone summers.
the fan is turned on low speed, and my neck is stiff from the draft
and turning towards the window.

art ain't about first tries
life's a slip but no slide
tears make for poor eyes
takes more than two hands to chin up
and you ain't a **** snake
no slide, just grind
no standing around
loitering not allowed

manus tuas scriptam sunt,
moles in your skin sunburnt,
lines of every schematic in an unknown line,
belied by the touch of time.

I'm hoping to burn in the heat of your flame,
when the heretics try to utter your name,
the manual to your every outline and flaw
will be lost to the masses and die by my law;
love.

it's easy to say time heals all wounds,
when every barren branch blooms again in spring,
when every new chick is taken under a safe wing.

but time is yet to wake me from my eternal winter sleep.

i still lay, unmoving, in my barren keep.

even bears leave me behind,
a permanent fixture in their den,
"maybe time will wake him next spring,"
they say, now and then.

the forest whispers above my head,
calling to the last absentee,
but i am no tree,
and spring does not speak to me.

thank god for the dead memory.
thank god, that it died while it was still good.
thank god, that it still resembles something i might’ve prayed for.

thank god, that i prayed for the death i didn’t know.
thank god, that my tears couldn’t well up
for the spring on the other side of your death’s door.
thank god, yours was the first rain that taught me
what umbrellas were for.

thank god, that thanking god is such an empty phrase.
thank god, that it won’t grant you afterlife praise.
thank god, you’re now only a picture on a wall.
thank god, the effigies i bear in mind cannot be canonized,
for the things they’ve never done,
and the people they never were.

everyone in the world loses their childhood like a misplaced toy,
swallowed by the gaps in the couch.
putting your hand in, reaching back for it, only gets you *****.
and the lost toy appears in your dream,
like a flaming hero, a powerful swan, a gallant steed.
and you dream of the foe slain by your favourite effigy.
when you wake up, the dream lingers in the morning.
memory of a feeling, a place you could step back into,
if only you found the right path back.
but the dawn never feels the same anymore.
the sun still rises, the fog is still pink,
but you are older now.
and some worlds only exist once.