it melts on your tongue,
liquifying with the house’s undulation.
brick-bone dancing matron.

in the house of my mother,
i light one candle and leave it,
lit and flickering,
sweetly rotating with its pin ***** flame.

some wonder, quite casually, if this‘fire’ has organs,
limp, molten flesh sacks within its walls.
tendrils of light that could drape,
lover heavy astride the chair.

limp and languid fingers that barely escape to the surface

how far you were able to see,
what it must be like,
to live at its edge,
seeing an other place similar to yours.

it’s very easy to be a narcissist in this place. everything we surround ourselves with should be an extension of ourselves, but herein lies the interesting part. “ourself” is never tangible. there is no specific visceral mass within our bodies that can be named “ourself.”

“ourself” resides in the spaces between tissue, and even within them, it is not so much its presence or absence, but the formation itself, and not the building, no stone or lattice, but the way and manner it was presented before “ourself.”

that you would let me be your harbor.

grass blades gnaw at my backside,
they don’t mean to bite, they’re just fervent in their suckling.

finger knotted
mirror palm

it always felt more complete when it was just the three of us.
you, me, and the vast, faceless

upon him, you and i finger painted all these parallels.
places we would never see,
rabbit warren cabins we’d never trouble ourselves to clean,

big, stupid piles,
bodies lie vine tangled,
but something halcyon, no more.

“look around the warren.
take what you can carry, because this is the last you’ll see of this room.”

over time, after the border closure,
after the parades of death squads,
faces of our brothers and lovers cloaked in ivory.,

we learned to condense three people into one.
we learned to say less, our words short and curt,
save for hours after, or in between,
when we could warm our skinny wrists over an open flame,
dreaming of the heavy, 72-hour lemongrass day
when it was all just painted doors and blue lights as far as we could touch,

“look around the warren.
take what you can carry,
this is the last you’ll see of this room.
we won’t be back”

what is said of spiritual death is rarely ever without merit. A life continues, but it is no longer yours. those breaths escaping, ear-warmth in december, are not yours. maybe not in the sense that your body is yours. it never was. iris seeks out busy patterns, *******-splattered canvas in cacophonous {splendor}. within them is the pair of arms often dreamt of, clutching a more blithe, unaware ether of one’s self.

what is ‘regal’ can no longer be claimed. yet infilling begins, where once vacancies stood, cavity gape and naked, temples of our majesty are quietly born on white-robed mornings.

I was caught in the wheel for 27 days.
my ring finger, left hand,
just below the knuckle.
flesh lay threaded through spokes.

lying there,
blood in cascade within my veins, away from the finger tip.
a bustling commute inside of me.

eyes upward, fixed there, even in rain.
overflowing in showers,
these bubbling iris pools.

I’ve had my fill,
and very swiftly i go.
on the mornings of journeys,
hesitation finds no home in me.

the only request i have is for a graceful exit,
swift, and defiant.

one is in a constant state of reinvention,
molting,
feathers in cascade,
barely hiding ****** and birthmark,
no such garment exists.

one is constantly healing itself.
save for other days,
when direct sun poses no more threat.

eyes fixed to a middle distance,
where one sits shiva,
avoiding the partial gaze of mirrors,
windows through which one may edit,
very slowly, to draw out its best features,
ignoring  revulsion and inequity found throughout.

one lives each day worth half of its potential,
other halves wasted,
excess fruit flesh clinging to rind.

one faces itself,
and sees not oneself,
but the ones that entered, paused in unity, and left,

one should not see exits where there are none.

the marble people stare not at you,
behind you, not at anyone in particular.
hunched, and clutching their glasses, thirst unquenched

there aren’t many of them now,
originally, there were thought to be thousands,
breathing quietly among us,

after the man has paid dowry for our daughter,
i turn to her and whisper,
“i think i’ve lost my spirit,
misplaced it, otherwise it flew from me,
escaped through my mouth while I was sleeping.
it slipped through the barely lit crack of parted lips