I will inscribe a scribe's favorite scripture
Inceptively distinctive to your woeful mind
An inspirational frame I will capture
Between the fluff of your pillow
To detain the tendrils of yesteryear, floating
Beneath the purple of your sallow
Eyes I am denoting
With every kiss of mine to each lid
So that dreams will inspire instead of forbid.

Tiny clumps of hair
Once caramel in color
Crumbles beneath the lowest
Lair of pallid
Trampled dust.
A lump in the back of my throat
Rises as the bone shows.
Our teeth have clanked
Collided in battle, our hooves
Finger-less and delving, we were
Ambiguously a hiatus in the water-color
Sticky like honey whilst Satan licks up my spine.
Burning sweet like the water that runs from the Nile
Into the mouths of every little insensate frame and comatose sky
Lacklustre pallor only children could buy.

Some days I think I could love you
If the grass was green enough
If I didn't associate your musk with the flannel
I search for at every goodwill
At every thrift store
Trying them on relentlessly
Button up, button down
As if each little plaid square could shrink my ******* smaller
Stretch my back vertically
Aesthetically speaking.

Some days I think I could love you
If was smaller and wiser
If I could believe in nothing
Rather than the absence of something
Every time I close my eyes and pray once more
Beneath the shadow of the hospital-tainted shower curtain.

Some days I think I could love you
If I remember the piercing blanch
Of whiskey burning in the back of my throat
If I recall the tears in your eyes on a mid-May afternoon
Standing closely in a gravel parking lot
Telling me "See ya later" instead of goodbye
Kissing my forehead, nose, and eyes.

Some days I think I could love you
If you told me it didn't matter how prominent my collar bones are
Or that it didn't take the catalyst of pickling my insides
******* a lonely man while you were away
To make you want for me.

Some days I think I could love you
When you trace the lines of my waist
Asking me not to lose any more weight
When you tell me I'm beautiful
That you envy my heaven
When you ask to see me simply to hear my thoughts.

Some days I think I could love you
If you told me you loved me
If that alone didn't set you apart from the rest
Aligning yourself a whole in one with the others
Only greater.

Some days I think I could love you
If I couldn't recall the misshapen line
Between a large vocabulary and eloquencey
Between a man and a frightened boy
Between an eating disorder and self-motivation.

Some days, I think I might love you
If I could silence my mind of all the fragrances of adultery
If I could leap elegantly past the fear of such a concept
Without wondering how I appear to you compared to the rest.

Some days I think I could love you
If I could forget that you can't
If I could remember how to open my own hatch
Without fear, as the key
If I could remember to love myself.

Some days, I think I could love you
Some days, I believe it.
Some days, I don't.

Inspiration arrives in the wee hours of the morning

Like a fresh snowfall that won't stick

Teasing, tickling my brain

Inducing a rumbling hunger for snow cream and chapped cheeks

A floating half-cadence

Stinging like the stale metallic aftertaste of the cavity I can't see

But I know I need filled

Like the hole you left when you were digging behind my back

Smiling beneath my feet and I fell a little deeper

Like you did into me under the Everclear

Night sky after we dropped

Altering our minds in a place we called home

In the company of our tribal community diving head-first into pursuit of personhood

By the hand of a tedium spring and temporary cushion

Where the new members must've watched behind closed lids

Before another night like the previous nights consisting of little sleep.

There's an assignment to complete

Suppressed by the urge to go for a night run to strengthen those thighs

I didn't intend to open, I swear to God

I never intended anything to result in this

Unresolved half cadence in the i-V-i progression

That I didn't compose on the theory test

I didn't pass today because I didn't finish.

There exists no focus to the wisps of ideas slapping these cerebral walls

Like lingering tendrils of broken thread and splattered paint on a drunk summer night.

It's too chilly now on the off days and perfect on the on's

So I will wait, patiently, more or less

To avoid dropping the wisps and distasteful run-on sentences

Into your feigning palms willing to grasp me again

Because what the hell else would I do?

I once found my heart in Catawaba
Where the blue cornflowers flourish between
Arabesque petals floating from the snowy dogwood trees
Encasing the air with the thick fragrance of innocence
You took from me beneath the dying maple tree.

The monotone cubicle in which you thrived
Wouldn't suffice for the rose petals lingering
Between your flushed lips drenched pale in the moonlight
Breathing "You are beautiful"
Smoking cigarettes with your mind.

Your fingertips
Trail
My shoulder
Inconspicuously
And we pretend we don't notice.

You’re the reason

My mother worries

Over the prominience of my collar bones.

It was your back

The time I dug too deeply

and repeatedly apologized, giggling

Laying across your chest

Cooling on the green and white striped sheets beneath.

I worry I’ve disintegrated the last thread

Of the daisy chain

Pinned to your wall.