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 take two showers a day now.

Mainly because I’ve been sweating bullets and tar.

Cleansing lightning and your thick black ink out of my pores.

Vintage sweatshirts on the beach and a dining room sky.

A pair of haunting eyes going down the drain a little more each time.

I keep your silver close. I haven’t forgotten.  

I feel it cold against the bones in my neck, good memories tears and chills down my spine.

Soft kisses and a storm, wisteria tapping on your window. Whispering our secrets to the neighbors.

When our bodies melted into one against  purple plum thunder.

Letting go is like trying to sell a wool sweater in the summer.

I’ll always remember loving you no matter the weather.

Have you ever run so fast down a wave of asphalt that you feel your breath catch up to you from behind?

Smacking into your back like a riptide at noon, the ocean striking like you were out past her curfew.

In the movies they catapult themselves from the crest and into a sun kissed embrace, those prettier than I.

I’d like to think of you on that shoreline waiting for my feet to hit 55 before our ribcages collide. Unfortunately, I left my room and board up north.

Where the ocean coughs up sunrises for the mountains and the city sleeps off a perpetual hangover.

Years of smoking and not smoking and smoking and not smoking won’t allow me to chase those swells. My lungs will never be like hers.

Thus, I will run like the devil in the opposite direction. Away from every advance even when your face is permanently scarred into my arm.

No matter if I build Oprah’s million dollar sandcastle, in the end, my greatest work of art will be not falling in love with you.

But I wouldn’t mind a kiss goodbye.

What’s your name?

Does it hum like
southern teeth between southern tongue?

piercing the salt marsh quietly.
The only place my heart still beats.

Bottle nosed boys never listen.

I wonder how long your life has become? All of the years just melt now.

Running until there’s nothing left to run from.

Did our sins against each other cancel out? Two negatives?

Missing strands of hair and sheet-less beds more than I should.

Lanky arms never let go, until they do.

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.

I was never a structural engineer, but I could pass for a knock off pyrotechnic.

I can tell you that

Even people that have never smoked can burn holes in your home.  

Their arrival,
is a patiently waiting for sale sign.  

Call me if you’re interested.

Their absence is heavier than the dust has been settled for years.

Its hard to remember
that you are made of that same ash.

Not like the kind in your mothers backyard, you’re the type to burn a bridge and run.

If you ever step foot in this town again
I will know.

I have been a skyscraper.

My entire life.
Taller than the other suburban girls.

Can you see me ablaze
from halfway across the world
hands releasing what they never used to hold.

A fire has never melted steel faster.

Who was I when you loved me?

She is molten in your neighbors driveway.

My elevator has been playing that song for
months.

Waiting.
walk in.
Press three.
Door close.

As you rose higher I began to fall.

Begging for your love was easier
Than begging for you to get out of my head

like that song.

So I’ll let you stay.

Walk into the lobby
and be greeted with a smile.

Jesus Christ, clad in a T-shirt and blue jeans.
Still emotionally raw relying heavily on her sending agency.
the face of savagery and danger.
Twenty-two years broadly chronological, better than any other outsider.
The rain was coming down in buckets

between the savagery no ladder was needed.
contrasts, atheistic of search and rescue.
she who led the search party was invaluable.

I have broken the Summer of all good things I might have had.
attracting Someone, to stage a brief burial service
Many of these materials took shape,
from memory in the pouring rain.

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.