If you saw me
I might be upside down,
Different spectra of vibrations
Pulsing from my goosebumped knees.
I imagine if I sweep my arms back and forth
Across the benthic stretches of our skies
I may feel your structure
In the crease of my thumb.

I reach my hand out to touch you.
Your elbow is somewhere in space,
Bent a certain posture.
It's possibly inverted,
But it could be rigid and reaching for my hair.
I think your forehead may point toward my collarbone,
Protruding like deer antlers.
In your universe my collarbone looks different,
Objects that will never be
metaphoric molds for my words,
But exist in every third line of your poetry
You may or may not write.

In-between our possible distance
There are millions of bodies,
Or just a few.
Neither of these options we can see
Or touch.
We will never know how close our blinks are.
Yet I can feel my breath rush down my chin,
Knowing if we ever found each other
Your exhale would twist into mine.

I pretend your smell
Walks the same blocks that I do
Home. Kindled under street lamp.
Or sleeps in my passenger seat,
Underneath fingernails and
Seeping through my palm.

I also pretend to know what your smell is.
When I remember how I don't know
I pretend I'll find out tomorrow,
Reaching for the smallest wisps
Traveling down jet stream and Lake Effect crispness.

I watch our arms sew together
under gravity's needle.
Our fingers bloom roses
as our blood shines and spins
together on our now single palm.

Mother watches from home
through her crumbling telescope.
She sees us suspended
in half kiss. She waits for impact
of hips, her fingers moist,
slipping off her eyepiece.
She wipes the sweat from her lip.

When I feel her gaze on the soul of my foot
I know she is watching with
cataracts and bifocals.
I am the same age a when I left her
while she cries dust on
her cracking refracting lens.
She can't look away at my stuck body,
rigormortic, frozen and unfocused
in her left eye.

She sits down and dies.
I have just begun.

child-like thoughts run through my mind in between the thoughts of adulthood coming at me
and all i can think about is the children's code
an infinite amount of everything out of anything
substituting words to mean something else

tongue we would only know
i'm feeling my youth tonight
so sit back while i speak to you in code:

the thought of complete bliss will always be the year of 2008
filled with sunny summer days
vampire weekend
and not a care in the world
adulthood so far away
the whole WORLD in our hands and all the ambition at our fingertips
memories tap into my brain constantly
tap tap tap
dot dot dash
.. / -- .. ... ... / -.-- --- ..-
repeat.
repeat.
repeat.

weekends filled with computer games
because that's what all the cool kids do right?
days of portal and nights of runescape

the sun is shining
we close the blinds to keep the glare away
we are chell

night time falls
creative gamertags emerge
we take on lumbridge together
mouthoil and lavenderbrwnie making their way

all on one screen of a complex calculator
binary running through it's circuits
01110111 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100111 01101111 00111111


symbols with a key
the easiest way to communicate on school grounds
passing notes
only we would understand

^(&$# RQH%QW%*D
E(H% R($T#% *%

I've seem to misplace the key
along with our time

almost 20
and our new method is a great one
poetry
so i'll give you something you're very good at breaking down:

it's raining harder in the backyard than the front
We both have that same feel
I don't even have to ask to know
but one day
the sun will come out
it'll be high noon
there will be sun and warmth all around the property
and we'll jump on the trampoline
tie dye some shirts
and talk in code once again

olive juice.

repeat.
repeat.
repeat.

In the dark we marked tattoos of
disintegrating constellations
on our rib cages,
our fingernails filled with ink.
We were told they would last
forever on 19 year old skin
when carved on the night where
each fallen brother of Sun kissed
our mid-August goosebumps.

The weight of our bodies
cut into the grass.
We came back the next evening to
watch these human Grand Canyons
sink deeper to Earth's liquid center
underneath flashlight flickers of an
approaching thunderstorm,
each bolt echoing on the hearts
of Lake Michigan fish.
The trees fell inside our craters
as we walked backward to my car,
fearing for our lives, but
immobile from each reaching meteor.

Perseus fell through Earth's granite throat,
parabolic melting of night sky.
Collapsed Big Dipper and Ursa Major
illuminated our chests
over shadow of dying white pine.

I throw my gubbins out
in my net, casting for a
dinner to feed you
by spoon.

My words are gubbins.
Irritating impulse of
fingers and joints
bending around your waist.

Our speech is gubbins -
puked through esophagus
bile and awkward conversation.
A belch of early caught perch.

We make love like gubbins.
You flop wrongly, I flip coarsely.
Our toes knot and break.
We kiss backwards.

I cry gubbins
on your sweaty shirt.
Your gubbin caught dinner
still smudged on your cheek.

I wake up to your bucket of
gubbins from dinner next to the bed.
I bring it to my boat
to catch our next meal.