This fever dream seems like it will stay forever,

Liquids cannot quench my thirst nor can they extinguish my body's need to feed on the shivering paleness of my flesh.
Stems of salty veins carve themselves down my face and bloom in my hands.
They ache and create splotched patterns of red and thread into my hair.
I dare not move for the magma spinning up my arms.

Fire like this leaves me begging for a quivering death.

I've barely broken a vial of vile
pills to chase out the thrill of overwhelming heat.
In my bed sheet catacombs I meet
the guise I despise the most.
the true grimace of my tormentor .
The flames filter my soul, and

I am screaming for a pure breath of cold water
to fill my lungs with ice,

and slip me into a frozen sleepless rest.

I thought if I moved halfway across the world,
you'd stay embedded in my bed sheets back home.
I thought your looks would stay locked in my desktop,
and you'd never follow me here.
And you didn't.
You stayed, and you flourished.
I left, and I'm failing.
I'm searching for meaning in strangers' beds,
and green bottles, swearing to hold light in them,
lightening my head, and lighting my body on fire.
Hands grabs and claw at my flesh,
never my soul.
Who I am can't please them.
I only want to please you,
To wrap myself inside you and find nothing but
citrus scents, sweat, and affection.
You wrapped threads around my rib cage,
and masterfully pulled the strings until my bones ripped out.
The worst sensation is the carelessness with which you handle them.
They stack up in a pile in your basement.
You ignore them, unintentionally now.

Your hands stir my body like gasoline. They burn my hips, and carve into my snow pale skin.
Their burning qualities trace the shapes I should be, your clay to mold.
My body exists as your canvas, and you create something of me.
I am a play thing.

Your lips whisper along my neck, and your teeth bite down on my veins, careful not to mark.
I beg for pressure. I beg for broken skin,
But you always hold back.

My love, you are an ocean.
Your arms are jetties, reaching out into the water, encompassing fish and seaweed.
Your fisherman's hands bear a deep roughness, rivaling sand across my untouched skin.
Their scratching surface rubs me raw, chaps my lips and splits them.
You drink the blood.

My life has been hazy until you.
Now it is overcast with fear and timing.
Inside you, a bomb sits, multiplying, increasing.
You pump manufactured time in through those arms I crave so much.
There is nothing I can do to help you.

Instead, I watch shoals swim by, each holding a piece of you.
So desperately I want to scoop them up, and rip their bellies open,
Marvel at their ribs, but not stop until I've ripped them
Skull to fin, and found your ink scrawled along their spines.

To call myself drift wood would be an insult to you.
Your past lovers' eyes shine like sea glass.
In time, and in you, they've become softened chunks of green, brown, and blue,
Shimmering across your hands. Across your chest, they gather.
Their brightness shows in your wrinkled eyes.

How I have come to love the etched time across your face.
Each inch something new I am discovering, yet discovered
In dives and ships alike. Maturity gathered and processed from
Nails and knuckles.  Ugly shoes, and screaming babies throwing salt across you.

Cracks run about your legs. You shake. You become
Stable; secure; sturdy.
Drag my body down. I want to flit under your surface, and gasp
Without breath, at the vast depth of you.

You slipped your tongue past my lips,
clawed your way down my throat,
and buried yourself in my stomach.
You ripped the humanity from my skin, tore it off with your teeth.
Your fingers burned roads across my chest, and immolated my earlobes.
Every inch of my body was yours, and you plunged your way into it as
deeply as you could.
Between my legs, you grunted, and pushed further into me,
ignoring my face, imagining someone else. I let you paint a picture over me,
and I let you kiss her instead. Tears soaked your pillows, as you had me face down,
taking all you wanted to give. Blood dripped quietly onto your black sheets,
as ignorant to the stain, as you to any true feelings.
You made me your destructive portrait,
pouring your self disgust all over my back and face.
There was nothing left for you to hate.
You purged yourself endlessly, taking another chunk of my humanity with each bite.
All I wanted was a sense of wholeness, a sense that my body was used for your self discovery,
not a shack where you could throw away your hate.
I'd stare at the rain through your window,
and will it to wash away the mess you'd left on me. It never did,
and I would have to settle for the rhythmic breaths from you,
floating over the empty space between us.

The boy, with the dent in his chest, inhales so loudly
that his ribs pop with a resounding boom. They shatter and collapse,
sinking to his feet. His life is lived slumped over, never making eye
contact because he believes it is a spell. His spine grows twisted, broken,
bent. His heart is locked away in a bone prison. With his eyes to the ground,
he is running blindly forward into a sea of decisions and failure. His
confused feet charge him head first into the girl with the swollen skin. She
sees his spine and ribcage ankles as intriguing, and he doesn't mind her welts.

He touches her, feels her, learns her.
She holds him, feels him, learns him.
She is his, and he belongs to her.
They are each other.

He sees the world, sees everything he was never seeing. Her welts become
a foreign thing to him. She was different, less beautiful compared to the sights
he was now seeing. Her mind tried its hardest to forget his twisted nature. She
could only remember how he felt her skin and called it amazing, stunning.
Her skin welted in his memory; his spine curled in hers, but snapped back
straight when she called for him. She shouted a final plea for the future.
He whooped and hollered and yelled so loudly that his inhale broke his
ribs and sunk them back to his feet,
as his head slid back into its horizontal position.

The sun has been following me.
It's been burning maps in my back, trying to lead me on the path it thinks I should go.
Day after day, it scorches my skin, and makes sweat drip into my eyes,
I am the atlas of the sun.
I want to be flung into the unknown; the dark and dreadful wild of my subconscious.

I will await my chariot, lavishly laced with the trimmest of trappings,
simply oozing respect and refinement.

The chariot will glide across the sands, and gently lull the world into a hue of dark blues, and purples will pour from my finger tips upon all that I touch.

This eternal desert houses my cruel feast, and I simply can't wait to sink my teeth into their skulls, and let their thoughts froth up onto mine. We will become a united kingdom.

Already I can see myself, immersed in this graceful reality, forever a silver goddess to my minions. They will frolic at my feet, and dance around like children; joyful, with denial hiding just behind their eyes.

Around my hands, they will crawl and roll and jest, all the while running needles into my chest, trying to best me at their foolish games. They think they can have me? They think I will bend to them?

I am under no control. I will sit on my throne and bellow of my crowds like the majestic creature I am. I am on your side, silly beasts. I am your queen, and I will never leave any of you! My blood will run across the walls and stain the bricks so that none of them ever forget that I allowed them to live.

All about my hips, they trip and skip to the shuddering of my skin they so callously cauterized. It's as if they've forgotten I was the one who melded them from my finger nails, and cut ties from my sails to sew them closed.

My hair flips and lifts from my head, while this smoke dream courses through it, dreaming of being seen like it may soon be said that they were my creators. Well, I was the true goddess. I was the only one ready to take a stand for them.

But as they drag me to the guillotine, I realize my delirious season has withered, and I have lost all o their trust. They see me as nothing but flesh to be thrown to the dogs. The blade glints off my eyes, brilliantly silver, like I'd once shone, but they've shown me I don't belong anywhere.

There is a sudden chill. My body becomes cold, and shapeless, and pointless. I lay there sad and ashamed, as the heat leaves my mind, and buries itself in the sands of my ever flowing desert.