I claim a hyphenated existence that does not belong to me

this is panic:

your heart forgets how to beat,
every muscle in your body tenses, sets a good example
your throat closes so your foolish heart can't escape --

you know you're not lucky enough to die like this, but you still hope it'll be over soon.

five years later and you think you should understand by now --
wait. did you think there was an answer? did you think this staccato heart of yours, these sweaty palms, actually meant something?

you must be new here.
*kid, they're gonna eat you alive in the Real World.

i like to think that there
're always people
who make wishes twice a day
no matter how old they
get, you told
me and
through the slurs for the first
time i heard you
hope

furious aesthetic and empty grace
like broken glass, like shattered inertia

holy roman emperors born and raised
in missouri gunned down, target practice

furious grace and empty aesthetic
like tear gas canisters, like shattered bone

hidden by roses laid down the highway
now ashen, red from embers, red from blood

the furious world watches empty screens
there is no aesthetic, no grace, in ******

the bus is a slow
revolving door and i am
its penultimate

i wonder if you took
all the untitled poems and laid
them out
end to end
how many times they
would span the globe and how
many hearts
could finally rest

you are not stardust
and you are not iron
you are not an element on the periodic
table and you are not
a being crafted for perfection

you are blood and flesh you
are skin and bone you are
all of these clichés and far
more but you are nothing besides
what you make yourself

not forged from iron not hardened
by fire but wonderfully fallible and beautifully
human

we are the sacrilegious baptizing
saints, flinching away
from rosaries and counting
sidewalk cracks

i slept alone, your
wrists were my hair. delilah
mine, i still love you.

today the marsh
had a viking
funeral
              all the
trees and all
the brush floated
along in their
frozen beds of
ice
      the birds
sang in memoriam
and even from
behind the glass
we turned
                   our
heads away
                      i
wonder where you
are and whose
funeral you're
                          watching

i have
many flaws
this i
have always
known i
snap my
gum i
eat too
much my
accent is
far too
heavy for
this midwestern
town and
i stand
too close
to the
street while
waiting for
the light
to change

today i
waited in
the bus
lane and
didn't realize
until the
girl beside
me screamed
as the
bus sped
past inches
from my
face i

guess i
forgot that
not everyone
wants to
cease existing
so badly
they subconsciously
hope for
a bus
to flatten
them on
their commute

today the marsh
had a viking
funeral - all the
trees and all
the brush floated
along in their
frozen beds of
ice. so when
you say that
winter only brings
death, you're right -
but the ice
that kills is
the ice that
carries and i
promise when it
comes time for
your burial you
will drift out
proud, victorious, a
conqueror even of
eternity

               and i
with my warm
hands and aching
heart

           will follow
you to valhalla
and far beyond.

it has been [43] days since i missed a dose
of you
             strange to think
                                         that you have always choked
on me

you told me once when i was
at the younger side of the ten
years between us that sorrow
was so familiar to you it ran
daily through your (nervous)
system. a tragic blood type,
you said. be grateful that you
are neither donor nor receiver
and your inertia will carry
you through.
  
                               tonight you
sat in the living room and tried
to explain the mystery of who
he is to your father. his first
love died in his arms as a
teenager. he went to military
school, reform school, but he
could never escape his tragic
fate.

         know this now: your
father will not understand. he
will nod and nod but his
tragedies were penned by
sophocles, your own
shakespearean; they belong
to different times. he will not
understand.

                       your father thinks
your blood type is the one
printed on the laminated card
in your wallet. your father finds
the man you love neurotic. your
father is a great man but his
veins are built for fire and steel

and yours are made for sorrow.

it's hard to believe
the earth was ever
dry

a cup of poison, a cake iced with lead paint.
maybe one day you'll understand that this sustenance is not food,
that your love is not love.

you asked me if i
thought it hurt when
icarus threw himself into the
sun

i didn't have the heart to
tell you how the story ended
how he woke up in a burn
ward

how he flipped a coin
heads or tails and when
it came up daedalus was still
dead

you can romanticize it all you
want but we all know who's
who in this metaphor and how
sweet

it will feel when you incinerate
me i promise when i wake up
wherever that is i'll still write you
psalms

If I didn't visit
I would forget how to miss you
And the worst part is

I'm not sure if that's a bad thing anymore

where the road ends
a hollowed-out husk
rests, smoking, ashen
                                      and if i could make myself believe
                                             the pyrotechnics were my own
you wouldn't have to
set your fires anymore

you make the moon ex-
pand with your laugh and contract
when you fall to sleep

don't move up north or
that midnight sun will steal your
magic, your heart, mine

you hide them
under tattoos, sleeves, belligerence
as if i wouldn't see
them anyway
as if i wouldn't love
you anyway

let me be your sutures and i will
kiss your scars until they are healed

I.

she was so
beautiful between my
sheets you just
couldn't stand it
you fought for
me first all
wars must end
sometime

II.

                    and wherever
the gods are
they're jealous of
us for loving
so endlessly

III.
                      my
antihero my heart
my backbone my
breastplate my battle
to lose it
was all worth
it

IV.

    for one
night with her

you make me want
to write sonnets
but all i have left
in me are these
ashen tragedies

an empty
takeout box
a heart
drained dry
your ghost
can't ****
me if
the smokes
do it
first give
me a
light and
pretend this
bed isn't
a pyre
in disguise

I.

i cut
my hair
i moved
away i
hid all
my life
and still
you find
me in
my dreams

II.

thirteen years
later trust
is still
a four
letter word
and i
don't drink
milk i
can't look
at Innocence's
face on
the carton

we laid on the bed and didn't touch.
i wanted you to hold me but i was afraid you'd catch this disease i have, apathy.
insomnia and heartache are synonyms,
you told me.
everything looks different in the dark.
you think you know your heart until the blackout illuminates a new one entirely.
i told you i was afraid and you wrote a lullaby down my spine.
that's not right.
everything is different in the dark.
you didn't touch me.
i forgot you didn't touch me.
the loaded question was on your lips as i pressed mine to yours. bang.
kissing doesn't count as touching but you stopped me anyway.
it was raining cats and dogs and you told me to lighten up or it would never stop.
i choked on your tongue and you called it a laugh.
silence is an accent i wish more people had.
you didn't say anything.
you didn't touch me.

you are my Brutus and I love
you more with each blade you slice into
me
23 stab wounds later and I am
made of wax
no longer bleeding or beating but
approaching thermosomatic phase transition when you
burn me alive
strike a match on my cheek light
a cigarette stub it out
my torso your ashtray, my heart a candle
lit vigil
burning low to ignite your frozen ire
I love you classical I love you Brutal I love you Antony
asleep in my tomb I love you buried under
municipal concrete I love you Amontillado I love you simultaneously
Héloïse and Abélard
I love you Delilah and I love you
you
let me count the ways
a six-sided die comes up 23
but my chest is already split open and you forgot
to feed the dog
give me public indecency and walk away
it's not your job to fix every schmuck who comes along
with a missing heart on your
beat

there was a time when my words were more than
please
and there was a time when you cared.

i taught you to care, darling, i taught you myself
and i'm small and i'm broken and i've ripped the world into chasms but i always thought
that you could bring me redemption
if i taught you

but i taught
you the wrong
thing.

you followed my example and you
lied;
you learnt it all from me,
how to laugh, how to cry, how to eat until you’re sick and how to
move inside another like you’re inseparable
and we fit so seamlessly i forgot that i was teaching you
how to forget yourself
because you're not you anymore, you're what
i made you

and wherever god is
he's jealous of us for loving so endlessly.

i've always worshipped you
with my heart, my battered and weary soul,
my mouth covering every blessed inch
of your borrowed skin

you've been my god for a long time but
now
you're not you
and i'm worshipping a
memory.

everything there is
to say is said already
but still we will write

because these fixed forms
are more than what they appear
to be; not constraint

but freedom in light
of your hand in mine, making
me forget my name

your heart in mine that
beats in time with the cadence
of these ancient words

we claim as our own.
kiss me poetically,
forget what we've known.

this is not poetry.
this is the sound a heart makes when you swallow it whole
this is the taste of bile in your mouth
this is saccharine-sweet cancer
(all razor-edge smiles that catch to bleed you dry)
this is the crack of your spine
this is the ars(c)enic route to hell
this is the twist of your lips when you hold in your sobs
this is a love song in a language you'll never understand
this is a funeral dirge for happiness
this is your blood, or is it mine
this is your heart, or is it mine
this is where we join
forces this is my rib cage plucked out to leave my
chest unprotected this is your cue
to leave me this is a swimming pool of viscera just
like you always wanted this is the coffee gone cold this is
your love grown old and this is
not poetry
this is your requiem.

you stopped caring about yourself around the same time that
she stopped fighting, which is
to say circa 1977, when president
jimmy carter asked you to turn down your heat, wear
a sweater, and you still trusted that things could change
so you wore two and shut your heat
off. she was no longer the beauty you married circa 1960, which is
to say she let herself go, which is to
say that you'd never loved her more.

now you're dead and she doesn't even
know it, but here i am getting ahead of myself again
and here you are hiding in the ground. i'm asking you to wake
up and you tell me no for the first time. your eyes stay shut.
now you're dead.

you finally gave up on keeping her home circa
2011, and you institutionalized her, and nothing had ever
hurt more. you stayed home alone. you
went to church. you visited her every day, and you prayed,
and nothing ever changed.

you went to the doctor. you died. you got cancer.
those aren't in the right order but you know
the story by
now. you can sort it
out.

you left me and i never even wrote that thank-you card that i thought about
for years, but i promise, i thought about it. i thought about
you.

here she is alone, here she is
trapped in her mind, here she is forgetting
you while you love her, here you are
six feet under, you silly goose. come home, we miss
you. come home, there's kolbas and solina and anything you
want. come home and maybe she'll remember
and maybe she won't
and maybe she's been dead since circa 1990
and maybe it's your turn now.

what's worse than the cancer - "everywhere",
as they put it, was the look on your
face when you told us about your 52nd anniversary. you
gave her a card and she looked at it for a moment, then handed it back to
you. they say she doesn't communicate with anyone anymore.
i think it's killing both of you.

i never wrote you a thank-you
note. i wrote you a eulogy three weeks before
you died. i brought cake but you're dead,
i cried for a week but you're dead.
i'm still crying. you're still dead.

i wonder if she remembers you at all.

Black lungs, bright eyes.
You are my only addiction and I inhale you into
my blood
stream

.
Leave me in the wreckage and I
will sing of you forever. Take me with you and
I will only slit your throat.

I’m praying for Pangaea so I can run to the ends of the earth for you. Mixed signals are cancerous so I swallow yours down to keep you safe. Sure, souls like fire in my bloodstream burn on the way out but they’re streaming for you into this chest cavity missing a heart, my own Judas, betrayed me for your eyes. Even saints can be lost causes, darling, but you’re neither. You’re a superhero, all technicolour capes and dollar-store disguises and you’d think I’m the damsel in distress but I’m your nemesis. Why else do you think I’m burning Earth to the ground, for my own perverse enjoyment? I’m pulling your hair, putting tacks on your seat because I’m too afraid to say I love you, which is a truth, which is a bomb to defuse before our bed becomes ground zero. I laugh at your jokes and offer myself up for slaughter but you’re not biting so I’m walking home in the snow, alone. I’m cold, I’m frozen. I’ve gone home to a Heaven of ice, heads in the freezer like a good luck charm, your words carved into my palms so I won’t forget. Back to the lab, back to the drawing board. Maybe I’ll close the warplans for tonight.
I know you belong to her but I’m jealous, baby, I’m so jealous. I’ll tell you to bow down, defer, sing a hallelujah to lull me to sleep before I remember how much it hurts to love you. And tomorrow when you’re gone I’ll plan death: hell, maybe the world’s. You might love me then. I’m not too hopeful.

i hope the bullet
that kissed your brain, dear
brother, was kinder to you
than i.

your lip jutting out is like a shard of broken glass
and I know you’d just stitch me back up if I tried but
I don’t think you’re very amenable to being kissed;
not now, anyway.
not here, you’d say.
all I've ever wanted was to put my mouth on you, baby,
taste the salt of your skin like natural protection against
your demons and mine
and all the others in between.
you think you've seen them all but believe me,
I'm older, I'm wiser, handsomer too but you don’t see me bragging about it
and I've seen what’s down there. I tried
to protect you for as long as I could but
we have seen the end of night
in the complete dark
together.
I almost miss that dark, the obscurity where you’d admit you didn't always have to be so **** conscious
and we slipped back to raw instinct and raw feeling
and I've still got the feel of your skin under my fingertips
and between my palms
and my hands have been covered with you for years, now.
I don’t dare to breathe on them lest the last of your DNA
slip through my fingers -
but it was probably too good for me, anyway.
your genes and your jeans fit you beautifully and I'm like a ****** hopped up on the memory of when
I raked my nails down your back and
though the lines have faded
I will always reopen those wounds.
I will never leave you more whole than I.
we have broken every rule and we have broken
each other, and I wonder why anyone
would settle for any less than this;
because an empty passengers seat is the loneliest place I've seen in the continental united states
and that’s counting the grand canyon, baby.
I have stood above that yawning tear in the ground and tossed my voice into it, practising idiocy and ventriloquism and other interchangeable words like that
and like a man carved from stone I stood there, watching, listening, waiting with a patience borne of desperation,
but after a few thousand lungfuls of broken glass there was no reply and I
left.
I pulled your favourite move and I
left,
alone.
so what do we have now? a car, the change in our pockets and each other?
it sounds romantic as **** but you've always been the poet here.
I'm just the guy who sits behind this frozen wheel and drives
because it’s easier than warming my hands
and when I tear your heart out the cold
numbs your chest so you can’t even feel it.
have you ever felt anything? have you felt me, baby?
has this whole ******* existence of mine been in vain?
because your lip jutting out is like a shard of broken glass and I've got
the oddest premonition that it can slice me to ribbons
if you would just move your head and look at me.
baby, please. look at me.
let me know I'm alive so I can die for you.

I wanted you to hit me, baby.
I wanted to fall to the floor and
                   think, numb, that this
                                     wasn't how
          it was meant to be.
I wanted to hear your skin
                   on mine,
         one more time
                                 before we die.
      I wanted to think that
you were a mistake, that
             I could have done so much
                                         better
                                              but you know
                                      and we both know
that's a **** lie.

      I had a list of platitudes
ready for the day that you
                     gave in, and I could
                               finally let go.
            Ours is a ferocious tenderness,
                        one that relies on
     your (brute) force
            and my twisted dreams
                                    of reddened skin
and bloodied knuckles.
        I wanted you to hit me, baby.
    See, I'd already forgiven you
but there's nothing between us
              save our lips
              save our bodies pressed
                         flush, one encompassing
                    the other,
              save the ice in your eyes
                                 and the typhoon in my
                        chest
                               that I think might be
                                              my heart.

              Save his soul, o my God.
        Bring him home and I
                            shall follow,
           with iron in my lungs (how do I
                     breathe
                                       alone?)
                and steel in my throat.

****, I wanted you to hit me.

you stopped caring about yourself around the same time that
she stopped fighting, which is
to say circa 1977, when president
jimmy carter asked you to turn down your heat, wear
a sweater, and you still trusted that things could change
so you wore two and shut your heat
off. she was no longer the beauty you married circa 1960, which is
to say that she let herself go, which is to
say that you'd never loved her more.

now you're dead and she doesn't even
know it, but here i am getting ahead of myself again
and here you are hiding in the ground. i'm asking you to wake
up and you tell me no for the first time. your eyes stay shut.
now you're dead.

you finally gave up on keeping her home circa
2011, and you institutionalized her, and nothing had ever
hurt more. you stayed home alone. you
went to church. you visited her every day, and you prayed,
and nothing ever changed.

you went to the doctor. you died. you got cancer.
those aren't in the right order but you know
the story by
now. you can sort it
out.

you left me and i never even wrote that thank-you card that i thought about
for years, but i promise, i thought about it. i thought about
you.

here she is alone, here she is
trapped in her mind, here she is forgetting
you while you love her, here you are
six feet under, you silly goose. come home, we miss
you. come home, there's kolbas and solina and anything you
want, just come home already.

After work, we visited Uncle S----. I haven't
seen him in years, and he's not doing well.
He's moved in with R-- and L--- after time in
the hospital for chemo and even rehabilitative
care. He's lost a lot of weight. But what's worse
than the cancer ("everywhere", as M----
described it) is how sad he looked when he told
us about his 52nd anniversary. He gave Aunt
L------ a card and she looked at it for a
moment, then handed it back to him without
a word. I can tell it's rough for him, being
away from his wife - physically and emotionally.
They say she doesn't really communicate
with anyone much. I think it's killing both of
them.

i never wrote you a thank-you
note. i wrote you a eulogy three weeks before
you died. i brought cake but you're dead,
i cried for a week but you're dead.
i'm still crying. you're still dead.

i wonder if she remembers you at all.

it’s not nearly as romantic as you’d thought; watching the world burn
having it crumble under the weight of your gaze
          but here we are, the lucky ones beneath the gallows,
                                and we’ve got front row seats to the end of
    the earth itself.
this acrid, unbreathable smoke is in my
        eyes and
        ears and
        lungs and  slowly pumping through my
        blood
                     can you taste this desperation when we kiss?
    am i the only one who feels this
           sitting on cinders like it’s the hood of my car
  and wishing we could see through the haze?
i’ll miss the noise, the feel of
    cities rushing
    two-lane highways brushing along my
                 well-worn and weary tires
and you’ll miss none of it, none at all
                                                 because you’re dead
                               and you’re difficult and he’s wearing your face but
it doesn’t matter. none of it does.
  kiss me again to drown out the screams. i want another
          shot at life, but it won’t happen now:
    another car, another motel,
another rushed fumble out of our borrowed ties and IDs and lives
                  but all i’ve got is you and your coffee’s getting cold.
                          you’re not him but i can pretend with my
                      eyes shut -
                                         just don’t leave me with the wreckage.
you are my morningstar
                                 and i’m haunting you with life.

She doesn’t let herself think about it anymore. She has a schedule now, a timetable, something that might look like a life if you don’t scratch the surface too hard.

Wake up, call the hospital. Tend her garden, call the hospital. Get driven to the hospital and sit with Dean for hours, hours, hours, go home, cry. Lather, rinse, repeat. The only thing that changes in her life is the sky and the inversion it brings.

She walks on the sky when it clouds, because it’s more solid and sure under her feet than the traitorous ground that swallowed her children whole.

She bargains when it rains, to God or Big Brother or Allah or the deity of the day, because if the Jehovah’s Witnesses are right and their god is a merciful god, He will give her family back.

Once there was an earthquake and she smiled so wide she thought her face would hurt, stood between two rickety, heavy bookcases, prayed that she would die.

The most tragic part of her life is that she doesn’t. She knows this, knows it runs through the marrow of every bone in her body, which has to be why they all ache when they see the sunrise, as if to say another day, another tragedy .

Today she wakes before the sun and hugs her knees to her chest, sits there for a good three hours after he’s called the hospital and heard the same thing as always - the only thing that changes in her life is the sky - “We’re sorry, Mrs. N----, he’s the same.” Every day it’s the same, the same, the same-
-but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Same dingy cab, same crotchety driver, same stale cigarette smell. She lets herself smoke in here because if she’s lucky that’ll **** her first, but she doesn’t fool herself into believing that. Her luck ran out the moment she heard that shot from the door, heard her husband scream and saw all the blood staining the foyer-

But she’s not thinking about that. She’s smoking and she’s listening to the sound of the tires pummeling the ground mercilessly and she’s thinking maybe I should be that ground and she’s not making much sense at all, because she doesn’t sleep anymore and she thinks she might be halfway to insane by now.

They pull up outside the hospital. She’s always surprised her feet haven’t worn a track in the ground yet that leads straight to Dean’s room. She supposes she doesn’t need one.

She pushes the door open and the spark of hope he can never suppress dies with a silent scream, because Dean is the same, her life is the same, she’s the same and the same and the same and she hates it.

what you don't know about hell
is this:
your whole life, you're dancing on the edge.
the second thing you don't know
about hell is this:
the edge is ice,
and it's melting.

one step too far, and you plummet;
one step, one stumble, one slip.
you'll look upwards again and hope for a glimpse of the carbon-based dream called earth
and that's the worst torture of all:
to see entire generations of tightrope-walkers slip off that edge
and land broken at the bottom of their worst
nightmare.

after a few years, you ask me.
who am i? i've been here forever,
but i didn't fall.
i'm the one who pushes you into hell's embrace.

remember the edge and remember the cold
while you can
and one day, i'll be here
to bring you home.

si yo hubiera sabido
que es un "apellido":
es mi teoría
que yo lo te diría
y ya estaríamos casados.

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.