Cradle her home
Back to a city of witches and wonder
flying against the falling sky.

Staring at the earth 30,000 above
I hope she’s thinking of me.

Wings slicing through gray atmosphere.
Heart spinning at the speed of sound
I used to hold her here while she slept.

Safety in my absence,
Gravity our only enemy.
I succumb to the pressures of silence

Turbulence and tolerance.
It’ll all be over soon.
I descended leaving no mercy.

Of course, no one trusts a cargo plane
just like a beautiful woman
on the edge of sanity.

Leaving her stranded on the tarmac.
Divine is the departure of my natural disaster.

The one or one of many,
raindrops like beads on aerodynamic steel.
Her hierophant is missing in action.

A special type of hell,
wading in the chaos you create.
Expecting a savior other than yourself.

Not anymore. The clouds have parted.
Two breeds of fire burning brightly on their own.

Seat-backs and tray tables ready for another take off. Look up to the peach pit sky. Whisper my name out with a smile.

I had a dream about her last night.

We were different but the same. Gray hairs, gray eyes, New scars, Old memories.

Weaving through a foreign castle, crumbling. Rollerskating on cobblestone floors. Rough surfaces yet smooth sailing.

She was wearing cherrywood lipstick.
Every single tattoo, concealed and forgotten. When she smiled the gap was bridged. Requiem for flaws that never existed.

An orange friend with white pants and golden eyes hovering. Laughing together, smiling together, making trouble. How it used to be.

Yes.

She was there too.
She wasn’t me.
I was okay with that.

I saw how they slow danced.
How they cared and loved.
A perfect human in my eyes had changed in someone else’s arms. I didn’t mind.

Yet, I couldn’t tell you if she was happy.
I want her to be. Did she know happiness with me? Is it a game of following the leader?

I won the race, and I still got the **** beaten out of me. Too fast, too slow, just right? **** prize money, I just want peace.

Poreless skin hitting stone harder than cayendo and I was not the one coming to the rescue. Standing by nevertheless.

Watching new lovers roll around in the grass from a window in a tower. Sill cracking yet intact. Being strong on my own despite the pain.

Making love to other women, and not loving other women. Moving at the pace of the sun. Emotions stitched into the moon.

Are we deceiving each other? Am I deceiving her? When the foundation caved the walls stood tall. Sturdy and ruined. Holding both, destruction and tolerance.

A playground for the curious, hopeless, and romantic. I’ll dance here for a while. This is still my home. Diminuendo into the darkness. I’ll rise again tomorrow.

Cut into my bones and you’ll
find fragments of your irises.

Dark flakes of earthy perfection,
cowering behind rigid pores and dense structure.

Parts of me that used to be gelatin in your arms.

I hear sirens in the distance. I see the hallows of your cheeks doused in blue.

The most beautiful face I have ever seen.
Nothing but a ghost coursing through my veins.

I don’t want to give back these fibrous gifts you left behind. I want to piece them back together, until I’ve rebuilt you wholly.

Standing together in the blue light under a night sky as thick as oil. One last time.

Stretch your wings into the city.

Let the smoke fill your hollow chest.

**** yourself in the mirror.

Equality sleeps with justice in death.

I wonder what it feels like to be the earth under a stroke of lightning.

A close range bullet wound from the love of your life?

Green crust curls around the energy like my hairy goosebumps around your fingers.

Earth and sky clinging so heavily to one another.

To be ripped apart, neither would survive.

Essential primary chaos.  

Pain so devastating is only natural.

Love so tender never felt more excruciating.

Is it symbiosis if only one party can be completely destroyed by the other?

Her eyes open and wreak havoc on my delicate armor of vegetation.

She feeds me all the same.

I carry both of these truths responsibly, a concealed weapon.

Emotion coursing through my veins, a final meal of electricity.

I absorb the impact into my fleshy carbon layers.

Waiting for the day she can soak up the same.

She asked me to write her a happy poem.

Me, a natural disaster trying to write about the sun?

Yes, I found her, Liv.

The one who’s orange brilliance pushes through even my most treacherous storms.

Exhausted and still burning. The one who loves me with purpose.

Her shards of lustrous flame carve across my palo santo sky like red tattoo ink dancing on murky water.

She taught me that cats and rabbits can learn to fall in love if you let them.

The food chain is a human construct, love isn’t.

I want to become a red sunset reflecting over the lake too.

Eventually my clouds disperse like fireworks.

Engulfing the sky together against a moon made of chrome.

I’ve never written one before, and now I never need to.

She is my Happy Poem.

Unlike most people,
I sort of enjoy going to the dentist.

Poking and prodding in my mouth,
“What college did you attend?”
“How often do you floss?”

These are life’s eternal questions.
What scars did you create?
The first or last thing to rot is your teeth, no? Your choice.

If the woman didn’t have her fingers in my mouth I would tell her about your 22-year-old baby tooth.

How it caught every crumb and how we planned to pull it out with a doorknob.

And how I fell in love with your chrome colored bedroom, dripping with chains, like the braces etched into your knee.

And how the whites of your eyes get pearly in the sun, milky baby teeth.

I’ll stop drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes if it means we never decay.

Just promise to brush and floss and keep me safe, and maybe, I’ll stay.