You said my face felt
like sandpaper, as you kissed
me with your hand sliding
from my ear down to my neck.

I told you I shaved
my scruffy beard a day before
because you deserved
to see me looking my best.

But even my best wasn't enough
for you to stay in Illinois.
You decided a year ago
to run away to Colorado,
and I would be an anchor
weighing you, dragging
you into a darkened ocean.

Heavy streetlights
drown your face in an orange glow.
And I was burning like a California forest
holding your hand.

Coursing highways
driving down through half the world
so I can tell you I've always loved you best
for all this time.

Surprised affection
holding you: skin and bones in my arms
with your head buried into my shoulder,
sheltered now.

Chest percussion;
Tremors like midnight fireworks
when we tiptoe to your room.
Will it last the year?

My head is a car wreck:
oil and gasoline spilling out
like bloodied bodies
between shattered windows
and jammed in steel doors.

A pile of iron bars slips
and shoots out a spark to ***** liquid
crawling slowly toward a curbside drain,
and I’m on fire.

The words I worry you'll say,
will char my bones to powdered black.
I see us sitting on your bedroom floor
facing each other, while you calculate
whether loving me like you did
on your front porch is a liability.

I’ll admit to the risk
and show you the scars
like tattered ribbons across my chest.
Yours are like Christmas,
all wrapped up in bow.
I've never seen a wound
decorated so beautifully.

We made plans to spend the night together a week after I kissed you the hundredth time. I lean back in a rigid blue desk chair and count perforations in aging foam ceiling tiles and dead tubes inside industrial fluorescent lights. My stomach twists and turns like thick, black death of a tornado tearing through a Midwestern town. I scroll through your last texts, how listless they felt. I read "Goodnight" from days ago, with nothing alive filling a light blue bubble. I wonder if you'll love me enough until the weekend, when I take the final exit off a three-hour highway and course through city blocks like blood in woven arteries to find you. When we tiptoe into your quiet bedroom, I pray you'll feel concussing tremors in your heart, spraying blood like scalding orange lava through your veins, with every word I confess on the ashen wooden floor.

My bruises are fading
from that old, ragged bench
that we sat in for hours
as we fell further than we ever did before
into each other's arms.

That tattered metal frame
carved out a starving skeleton
through a dull blue cushion.
The bars dug into my back, shoulders and neck
like sinking teeth, spurting blood under my skin.

Now, the vessels are healing,
soaking up what's left of me
and tunneling it back to my heart.
Blue and purple reminders
of a quiet, muggy Saturday night
are becoming fluid—like my memory will:
Rather than the truth, I will remember
what suits me best, from a faulty camera in my mind.

I pray these wounds never fade,
so I can know the jagged angles forever:
both of the frame in my back,
and your sharp thin bones
cradled in my skinny arms,
maybe for the last time.

I press down on the waning bruises,
a sign that time has escaped me,
to feel no pain; no proof
that at last, you loved me best.

We built cathedrals on street corners
under heavy orange lights
cascading down our faces.

I loved your imperfections:
a narrow, twisted spine,
a long, indented nose
and a shrill voice slicing through
the midnight summer wind.

I'd love you forever
in the sagging bench
on your thin front porch,
where I'd spend eternity
tracing outlines of silhouetted trees
covering soft, flaring streetlights.

We burned through hours
recounting the wounds from our past.
Every kiss was a lightning bolt,
and cracked like raging thunder.
We felt a violent forgiveness
exploding like stars in the pits of our chest.

I will always remember your face
in an orange hue
from streetlights, scattered
all down your hazel eyes,
and a slight overbite
exposing your skinny teeth.

I've loved you better than the rest:
longer and deeper than any great canyon,
and farther, until the edge of doom.

In a humid summer shade,
surrounded by creaking swing sets
and shredded wood chips
you told me, "I'll never stop loving you."

Street lights and park benches our cathedrals,
the hood of a beaten down Honda our tower of stone,
where I came to love you most.