i'm laying on the floor watching YouTube videos
of veterans coming home to their pets
and i imagine you as a veteran
and me as the dog crying in your lap.
but if i'm honest with myself,
i'm the veteran coming home,
my heart is a dog,
and you're a cat in the corner who doesn't give a ****.
i don't even need to tell you that love was the war.
love is always the war.
i just want to lick your face.
i want to paw at your chest after a long day.
i want to stretch and have you scratch the places i can't reach.
i don't understand the command "stay".
i am casting tiny spells where i pick lint off of your sweatshirt
and chew on my bottom lip while i look you in the eye.
but you are disenchanted.

you are eighteen and you're in love
with a boy who hates his birthday.
you don't know it yet,
but the world gets so much bigger than the back of his car.
you think he needs you to be happy and so does he
but both of you are wrong.
it'll take you almost a year to stop crying.
and then you don't talk for another three
and when you finally do,
he thinks he still knows you,
but your heart is heavier than it was then.
and you **** him because you're lonely
but it isn't the same.
neither of you can fake love.
at least he still makes you laugh.
you'll pretend it's enough
because at least he's a body.
at least you're not by yourself.
at least you're alive
and you're good at *******.
because bodies are distractions
from the things we hide inside them.
you have him inside you
and he wants to gut you of your ugly, your sad.
he scrambles for an excuse not to stay the night
and you laugh.
you know what this is and how it goes
and you both love someone else.
you swear you won't **** him again
but you do anyway because you're still lonely
and you like the way his hands fit around your neck.
you **** him because it's good for your art
and you get bored of your own hands on your body
and you're fine with letting him feel useful.
and you think about when you were sixteen
and how *** was supposed to be special
and it makes you cry
because you're not who you wanted to be.
it makes you cry, because the world got so much bigger
after you left the backseat of his car.
the world is so big and you don't know
how it ended up on your shoulders.
you would have died for him.
you have been ready to die for every person you have ever loved.
you have dreams where he dies
and you can't save him.
you have dreams where people die
and you can't save them
and you're the one who tied your hands.
your mangled heart and all its bleeding.
nobody asked you to die.
what good is all the love in your chest
if you don't leave any for yourself?

- m.f.

Mystyque, lost in your clutches, beckoning to me, the longing, the everlasting

made lightly of your touch, and smirked it off,
but always found myself back at the foot of the piano, laying it out, far out the dress, the long dress, of mystyque, lay of me, layer of layers, clawing at the absence of time, your jaw dropping exposure, endure, ensure the masses that there isn’t a scene here anymore
butterly love lasting sadness, jiving mystery, beauty, your rival, shock her in the eye, shuck the corns from her toes, a mildew the droplets and form the new ring, sounding the array of fixtures, fingerling crossings, in the middle of a field attempting to shoot a scene, not going as planned, never to be what is expceted, or perhaps never better, a clamor, a vicious madness a stamour, mystyque, your forces know where we all must go, to bold to shy away when the opportunity emerges, as a ballet, as a wedding rehearsal, know your place, your gallant white sondress, your dawning, singing random tunes,

drawn into the dampening doom, drugged out and done, doing what needs to be done, fickle and free with the time, you surely know the direction, you see the deed, which rhyme?  your wellspring, your sinking fixture at the top of the ceiling, dripping off the balcony and onto onlookers, where they keep their deepest lockets, locked up in secrecy, breath in my direction!