There was a girl
I used to swap paperbacks
and spit with, once
I fixed her wiper blades,
I remember the soft dead wings
on the windshield,  pretty
as you please

She was alone in her shoes
listening to something
that kept getting darker
and glowing like morning
on the oil spilled under her truck,
she was drifting through
the rosewater of her soft red hair

She only wanted to be rolling
off a swollen river, sliding
out of a clean slip, turning
over in a deep sleep, trailing
a shimmering thread, hiding
under a pile of wet leaves

Then there she was sailing
in her river of blood,  going
white and smelling like smoke
from a struck match behind
closed blinds on a ceramic floor,
a white blouse red as a sharp knife
collecting the light of mourning.

someone's in the next room over
having *** while we
are weeping
what a way to mark the occasion
the day my fingers found a wound
you let someone else doctor
it's upsetting see
the bible in drawer next to us
the way our hands still
fit together
like the torn halves
of a love letter
the way you got
all dressed up like the rain
and how we couldn't tell
the difference in the shower
it was the longest hour and a half
spent crying
the hot water wouldn't give up
so why should we
right?
even though it was scalding
neither of us touched the ****
we knew this was supposed to hurt
your hair
a black mess against my shoulder
my fingers
oil in the vinegar of your hands
our bodies
the great divide
all the sobbing
a river runs through it
without the courage
to carry or **** us
so we step out
and drip dry
down to a mute breakfast
composed of quiet
and last nights liquor
as we came back in
there were people in our room
at first i thought them detectives
dissecting things
to see who had died here
i had forgotten this
was a hotel
and they were only
cleaning up after us
i wanted to stop them
plead
that the sheets were still perfect
that if they clean the bathroom
no one will know
what happened here
someone has to remember
"please
i know
these cigarette burns
by name
i will bury the faucet
let me take the tub
i don't care how
if i have to
i will drag it home by hand"

You can bleach your hair
Or cut it off with a butcher knife
All of this done by candle light,
In the middle of the night

Get him just drunk enough
On perfume liquors in the backyard
And whisper little things about
The parts of you made of glass

Trace his name across
Your open veins in vibrant reds
Mailing him dim lit photos
Of  scar tissue evidence

Crash your car into the drive-in movie screen
Think about how things could have been
If you never let it slip
That you dreamt of his top lip

Were your feet planted in
the same place i discovered you?
Once
our arms touched like it was nothing
skin rubbing lovingly and unaware of the ugliness coming
blue lips locking and
peeling off the plastic
covering the carton we courageously collected
our breath in

We see stars inflating,
baking and heaving
We feel floods rushing
around our ankles and
into our woolen socks
pushing too much and
cringing for the pop

Reluctant and rooted
Suited for a funeral
never scheduled
I search for you underground
only to find a chest
inked with a Japanese dragon
broken lock burnt off and open
the black lungs of a drag in
stained with golden tobacco
wooden bolts with roses
angled against me
I vine up the veins of your attention
and beg you to stay for breakfast

fast forward

into an album stored under the China we will never use
or look at
Twenty seven photos and twenty seven guests
and two hands to flip through the laminated past
and one hand to count the days that they’ll last

I can't hold you
Like I really want to,
Hold you
Where my hands
Could leave imprints
That will not be easy to forget,
I can't caress you
Like I really want to,
Trace every inch of you
A map that leads
To the stars in your eyes,
I can't love you
Like I really want to,
Ardently consume you
A feverish attempt
To absorb you,
But for a moment
Intensely rage
Against the night sky
Feel your soul
Bubble beneath your skin
Peel like a sunburn,
But I can make do
Just being next to you...

APAD16 - 017 © okpoet

Sometimes the words I love you swarm like hornets behind my teeth, a phrase so heavy it only has eight letters just like I lost you.
Sometimes in the pause you take before you speak, I wonder if you’re fighting to keep down the same things as I am; trying to swallow a confession that seems less like a secret and more like stating the obvious.
We were funny, we were bad at holding hands, I hated when a car goes over the tracks, you had this way of making silence the loudest sound in the room when it hit the floor.
I made a home out of your hands just like how many beautiful things go without reciprocation.
We seem to have found fault in being whole, somewhere alone the way, we’ve started enjoying breaking things;
Like my ribs when you’re gone and I want to know if you can tell the difference between the absence of my voice and silence.
You are the only thing I’ve ever let go that makes my hands ache.
I’m still trying to piece together what made you lose your faith in me, was it how everything starts with gritting teeth and everything ends with you walking away? I should’ve known, the way you used to hold my back like you were checking it for exit wounds.
It took me 2 car wrecks and 6 shattered mirrors for me to realize that the world has so much more to say when it is silent;
if I didn’t bruise so easily, if I wasn’t looking for a way to be made of a river, if I needed the silence to mean something, then I would ask you to build me out of quiet revenge and goodbyes that stick in your sides like tree branches, I would need you to build me out of reasons to believe instead of reasons to be afraid, I would turn my kneecaps into strawberries in exchange for potter’s hands so I could mild you a bulletproof spirit.
It was silence and your lighter, I was cold, you were drinking; that was our backbone.
You were alone, I was going too fast because sometimes you don’t have to be in the wrong place to be looking for the wrong thing.
I am afraid and you are warm; this is the beginning of a forest fire filled with broken glass shattering in broken homes with broken people inside on a broken piece of land in a city that has too much rain for someone to build an emergency room in.
I spend nights up until my body can’t handle itself any longer,
mornings have come like a hammer to my head-
instead of my face, all I can see in the mirror is an unfamiliar expression,
something like a dead battery.
All I ever wanted was for you to be my fire, I am tired of these old lives and would like to see them burn.