My name drips from your tongue like honey
Honey
Why is the only question I've ever asked of you

You tore the skin from my bones when you left
You carry around the molted layer of the person I was with you
And you call her Darling

You caress her in your mind
This make-believe
China doll self

You always did say we were just too much alike
Funny
How being without you made me more like you

Plagued with the thought
Of becoming the person who hurt me the most
I wonder what pushed you too far away

You used to call me a cynic
For saying I loved you with all my mind
And none of my heart

Well
At the moment
Darling
I'm feeling cynical as hell

darkness signals the
retreat into
the shell
of sea-side
sounds.
they whisper
innermost thoughts
of blindness and
profound seconds
of suspended
fallen flowers.

the recluse
can see more
in the deepest night
than the lightest
day.

thoughts circle with
the stars, as the
atrophy of apathy
begins
and the menagerie of
faltering frowns
follows.

bone is bone is bone
is bone.
my hands are forever too tiny,
my hips forever too big,
and you forever the girl
who’s always wanted to leave.
when we first met you talked of
hating the palm trees seventy degrees
traffic clogged grit and smog,
graffiti covered rat sewers
mansions dotting all the hills
and everything else i’ve ever loved.
i reminded myself that some people
need more than a place with
hundreds of stars on the sidewalk
but hardly any in the sky.
when i think of superpowers
i imagine being strong enough
to carry manhattan to you on my
shoulders and all your rain clouds
in my arms.
if you ever turned fragile i would
arrange a fortress out of skyscrapers
big enough to cover all the hills,
and with tiny hands i’d point
to the clouds and make them fill
the sky outside your window;
white as bone, as bone,
as bone.