I wish I had words to describe the fire you've set beneath my ribcage; the way it began as kindling, and the way it grew into a dull roar like the pulse I can hear behind my ear drums. It is a steady beat that breaks the monotony of silence in the late hours of night. I can pick out half-memories in my mind that tell me I was aware of you always.

It feels like hope when warm sunlight kisses my cheek: a quiet kind of thing that whispers and never shouts. The way hands seem to find each other in the dark and ache to fill the space between each finger with another's.

I want to explore with you; to trace the outlines of a map on your skin and follow those lines to all the places we've never been.

I want to learn the history rooted in your bones and recite it like my favorite poem. I want to know what makes you grow and where your gravity is centered; how words taste as they form on your tongue and how they look like art when you speak, because when you speak you move mountains in me.

particles
aligning
              galaxies
              colliding­
                             the universe
                             is trying to
                             figure itself
                             out
                                  but
here we are
               now and not
               to revel would
               be a mistake

i feel
         a new
                    click
                            in my wrist
       the ache
                     from bruises
                                            long healed
bumping into things
trying to figure it out
                                     i always
                 figure it out
i will always
                  figure it out
the universe has sculpted my bones
stardust and ashes
half empty glasses

i know it may not be
             for a much greater purpose
i am simply
             the product
                     of everything
             that came
before me
and the weight of that
                                      is heavy
and the weight of that
                                      is
                   ­                       freeing

there is an entire
                   universe behind
          your eyes
i wasn't aware of
until you said my name
it woke the
                    stardust in my bones
formed nebulae       in my brain.
i don't know      which magnet
you
       stir
             in
                 me
but i am pulled to you
by the iron in my veins

You left a bruise on my lip where your teeth gnashed and you growled and you stared into my soul tasting me into being. I think you were infatuated with me and wanted to ingest me. You wanted to take me inside of you and let your biology break me down into the empirical parts of my whole but I didn’t know if that was possible, and I didn't know if you would understand.

You left a bruise on my lip where we touched for the very first time and it aches, but not from pain. It aches for when you will kiss me again, when our mouths collide in an explosion of wonder and wanting to know another person: something tangible, a sense of an idea in your mind, turned into a clamor of color and sound and taste and touch and I think I know you from some place different. Maybe I knew you when we were stars, before our particles were rearranged and we turned to ash and skin and dinosaurs and the world.

full bodied and rich
a glass of red wine and a cigarette
short dress, sticky skin
lips the color of sin
your voice, a storm cloud
heavy with loud promise
dark and deep
contrast to summer greens
*rain down

this is what my heart
                   looks like:

           it is            geometric
                                       and angular
           there are                      dark corners
                                                        a­nd sharp edges  
But sometimes in the
sunlight some of my
sides look so
bright