i.

You say 
I look like a twig

as if I should be ashamed

to be compared to a strong tree.



ii.

You hold my gelatin arm,

letting it hang, 
laughing
that I am all skin and bones,

but aren't you, too?



iii.

You think I should come
with a caution label
explaining how to properly hold something

as breakable and fragile as glass. 



iv.

You slink your arm around my waist,
dancing your fingertips over my protruding hip bones,

confessing it feels like it doesn't belong.

Why isn't it beautiful
a part of my vessel isn't
 hidden?



v.

You are aghast when my ribcage

slightly shows, stretching my masked skin.

Why are you horrified
to see the very structure

protecting the ***** I love you with?



vi.

Twice the portions,
 twice
the helping.
 Will I always have to prove
I am anything, but 
empty?



vii.

Last time I checked,

you were a skeleton, too.

Goosebumps cover my
skin as I shiver from the
chilled touch of your soul.

my father was an electrician
but he never taught me how to remedy
strong jolts of electricity
that leave your limbs quaking,
your lips shaking,
your soul aching.

they say a bolt of lightning
can measure up to three million volts,
but, then again,
your touch holds more power than any storm.

The law said her body was made for love
The kind of love that wants to show you
just how much it loves you
by sticking things inside of you

hard
fast

Then slower

The kind of love that wanted to make the bible blush
make you quiver; the
kind of love when you put a female and male hamster together.
The kind of love that wanted to make music out of your ******

Love said "This is what happens
when you use
Needles to ingrain the words love
on peoples skin"

It feels a lot like pain did

Like when the first boy you ever loved
said I love you back
And proved it because he held you after
sticking sticky things inside of you
Like how he said hed wait untill you were ready
then said "You're gonna make me wait forever.."

How that guy on the third date said
"Come back to my apartament
So I can put what I want into you
Until you are empty
Because we might call it love"

Until you met a boy
who untaught what the word love meant
never asked you when you wanted to have ***
whose hands never roamed as greedily
searching for places to settle on your body
who didnt wish to make a home out of you by filling you senseless
and calling it his furniture
art
who traced outlines of constellations on the palms of your hands
and played
"Guess the Nebula"

Whose hardness never prodded you in the back
like a protest
in the early morning
whose breath always came easy
never hard
or fast

It was just holding you with no intention to
*******

He said
"Love isnt what you put inside a person
In hopes of making it stick;and naming it after something beautiful
I can pin my thoughts on you but
you are not my canvas. That wouldnt be fair.
I respect your property."

There was nothing broken when he left.

oh, you
you that fills every layer of me
you that stains my skin and heart just by being; you who is a part of me
you who's lips taste like the remains of last nights cigarettes and the transferred aroma of my morning coffee
and oh, those lips that brush my skin, and make my hairs stand on end; and the beat of my heart quicken
and unhealthy it might be, that you leave me unable to sleep, unable to breathe without your sweet company
but that will never cease my desire
you, with your limitless potential; never seen by your own eyes, but
oh my it is there
you that transports me to a new universe entirely by a quick glance

my sunrise; and reason for the sun rising each and every day; for what is the point without beauty for the suns rays to rest upon
my muse; for what is poetry without inspiration
me; for what am i without you

you and your imperfect perfections, of which i could never match; but still i try
and oh, there are some that write better; always use the right words
and think more deeply
but there are none who love more passionately, entirely
than yours, truly

His fear had voices
for which strategy
answered
so convincingly
that he could
tell himself anything
to justify what he had done
he remembered her saying
I would not take you back
if you cheated
so justification bellowed
like ****** to his army
making her the enemy
and him the conqueror
it was working until
his son asked where she was
because he liked how she
would scratch his back
he tried throwing the
new girl at the boy
expecting him to feel
what was commanded
but truth had
invaded Europe
and fear had holed up
in its bunker
and tried to commit suicide
with its mistress
he blamed the child now
and ordered his feelings
into the gas chamber
but a piece of brain hit
him in the face
and he threw up
what have I done?

I feel like a small frightened child, one who has become lost in the deep dark woods of every child’s nightmares, cold, alone, well past “losing one’s cool” and just precious inches away from “flipping one’s ****,” the only things that I possess a flashlight that I cannot figure out how to switch on, a compass that only points backwards and a magical, wish granting genie that only speaks in a language that I have never heard and therefor do not  understand while at the same time am not understood, whose only option to improve his situation is to sit in one spot and wait for help to arrive but what if it doesn’t  so I am forced to action to fashion crude tools and build a shelter and hunt and cook and survive because no one is going to find me and I am not going to find my way out, so I must live in the forest of nightmares and darkness...
...and then I begin to wonder if that small child is not a child at all, but an aging man in a worn bathrobe, alone in a darkened room in an asylum, sitting under a table with a bed sheet hanging over the sides like a makeshift tent, trying desperately to find the “ON” button of an empty pill bottle while I wait for a wound out, wind up clock to find North during the stock market numbers on the local Hispanic radio station, forever stuck in the nightmare forest created by his own mind, which is somehow less terrifying than the reality of his unreality...
...because it is beginning to become very muddled in both of those places and I am beginning to lose track of his self so here looks like a good place to sit down and wait for help to not arrive and over there a good spot to build a temporary cemetery plot to rest my weary hours and while away the bones because unless I figure out a way to sort his self out, I will forget to send for help that I am tired of waiting for and the seconds in the dark that were not there a moment ago and may not be here now will be gone forever when the clock strikes South-East and I am left alone again with only a snot nosed codger and a loony old brat, looking out a window that directly faces a brick wall, watching and praying for the sun to rise on its horizon.