they passed wrong a hundred miles back and stopped to look at it.
they prodded wrong and decided to leave it there,
decided there was nothing more they could do.

they drove past wrong a hundred miles back and never glanced behind them,
sure that it would stay put.

they passed wrong a hundred touches back and ignored it.
they got caught up in each other instead,
stumbling on skin and regaining balance with lukewarm feet
sure intent and trembling fingers,
as they met and joined and became each other.

they passed wrong a thousand miles back and promptly forgot that there was any other way to live,
to love,
to be,
other than on the edge of each other,
dangling their legs off the precipice of their joining hearts and joking about the warmth below.

they passed wrong a few deaths back,
a few lives, a few loves.
they took one look into ennui, hubris, things that other people called day-to-day life
and they turned up their noses,
mouths and lips and bodies following until they were just skin on skin,
love on love.

they passed wrong a hundred miles back and stopped to look at it.
they prodded wrong and decided to leave it there,
decided there was nothing more they would do.

they drove past wrong and into each other, a crash-test dummy feeling up another in the backseat of a '67 impala
as the simulated collisions overtook their shared world.
the windshield broke and they're showered with glass that cut them apart time after time
but they found each other amidst the sirens and kept moving on.

they drove past wrong a hundred miles back and never glanced behind them,
sure that it would stay put.

there’s no rosetta stone to decipher the engravings on your bones, old as the core of the earth itself.
i trace my name onto your skin and
i breathe my heart into your mouth but you never want anything more than my hands further south and i
want you to be happy so i do
what i hate and i pray it’ll make you content
because when you cry i swear i hear the heavens crying too, the sun looks on as though it disapproves of us and i’m shaking enough as it is, darling
april is over and the drought has brought us nothing but weeds.

i used to think in between should be one word, a preposition unto itself.
i’m inbetween your legs.
i’m inbetween the sheets with you.
i’m that space inbetween your lungs and your chest where your heart would expand if i ever let it take that chance.
but the space-
the space, angel, is what makes all the difference.
i haven’t lost you to this,
we haven’t lost us.
we’re just in between.

your hands were smooth in california but i miss them
rough, on mine, in toledo
and in far-off colorado where you decided
you wanted to learn how to ski
and i sat moody at the bottom until you flew down
to meet me,
and we swapped warmth and tongues and promises
because flying with you is the only way i’d ever let my feet
leave the ground.
and your palms were scraped and charred in california but
three years ago to date they were flat on my
chest when we moved together - in and around and
with each other
and you’d whisper love into my knuckles as i hummed you to sleep
because you might’ve learned to run but i’ve been
hobbled with you my entire life and ****, i’d die a thousand times over
just to see you smile.

we are lines that run parallel to the sea and never drown.
you are beautiful and i study every inch of your
body, hidden under layers of threads woven perpendicular,
crossing over your heart and back again, over and under and i’m
very nearly jealous, if not for the way you let me
into your body
and folded into your arms, skin to skin
miles of skin for me to mark and kiss and worship and baptize
with these earnest eyes welling up because this isn’t what i
wanted, this isn’t
right
because you’re supposed to get up now, and tell me to stop being a girl,
and pick up that shotgun hefted like an extension of yourself
and spray the world with salt and holy water because nothing is holy anymore;
not on its own
not without us,
and we are the sacrilegious baptizing saints, flinching away from rosaries and
counting sidewalk cracks.
but here you are on the horizon and you’re too still like this so i
shake you awake and i give you my sweatshirt because i can’t give you my
heart to replace yours, weary in your chest
and beating so slowly
.
i might as well be dead.

Aching under his skin.                   his nerves are
Exposed wires that hang low between his
Veins and
                Red goes with blue goes with bleached-bone-white
Goes with nothing at all
Because the angel is dead and the sky
Won’t fall.

The water tastes like cyanide,
The ocean is stripped of salt
Your eyes are stripped of blue;
                Won’t you take mine
Instead?
Won’t you take me home?

Home, o home!                      home is a stupid
                Word for stupid
People who believe in
                      Things like love and
Faith and a world that plays
Fair.
The only fair player in this game was death
And               I always knew he’d cheat in the end.

their clocks tick. sure, his
is off-beat much like his life
and hers ticks along

sluggishly. o how
a heart can stumble into
another in the

most inopportune
manner! this doesn’t make sense,
she whispered that first

night, and he could do
no more than agree. this is
pointless, he rejoined,

and instead of that
expected sombre moment
they both just snorted.

death’s conventional
and the night is young, though their
days are old and mourn

for the loss of hope.
kiss, touch, ****, love. it’s enough
for two criminals.