Neck bent a little far to the right
Impressions of sheets in skin wrapped too tightly around willing wrists
Makeshift bandages for cuts that have closed but still bleed.
You must be out for coffee
Or on a call that couldn't wait
But Sunday's are for rain and dreams you can't quite remember
And secrets tucked in a leg bent at the knee.
I can't tell the difference between lust and love making anymore though I'd like to still believe in the latter.
You return and I lose myself in the corner of your eye and I hang myself there on those lines
Allowing myself to kiss you there just once for fear of becoming too entangled
A sweet suicide that'd be
Gasping for air
Lost in your laughter

“Dearest Degas,” she scrawled
script tipped and tainted by blood,
a reward only the most skilled of movement makers receive,
one she gives away all too freely.
“It’s times like these that make me think
I used to be a lot closer to God
and to you,
but the lines are blurring now
between you two
and I am burning now with memories
of the arch of your back echoed by brows
crested by beads of sweet sweat
raised higher still with finger-lickin’ lies
and lowered by our goodbyes.
They say my knees got lazy,
but I pray en pointe daily
at that battered barre,
my altar
closer to God than they’ve ever been.
And it’s His name I speak,
spoke
over us as we rolled in our sin.
‘Turn to God!’ they screamed
but you were always a better comforter than He.
And without you to give me form,
I will dance no more.”

I am no different than that boy who claims to love you
Hand in hand we spill our hearts in slurred proclamations
Dressed in black we are mirrored shadows, hollow lovers, the singers of night songs
Choking on ink and blood, we scrawl a final plea for peace
Or at least the pieces to put ourselves back together

Your lips give me breath
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me
But my prayers have become monotonous
And everything I write has been said before
Am I your ****?
Am I your little *****?
Too foolish to know what's good,
A glutton begging for more
Breaking bread in the bathtub
You lick the communion wine from my thighs
The morning light peeking in, a raging sadness within
I wipe the night from my eyes
Maybe you only call me baby in a bathrobe
And maybe I'm better off alone

I awoke in a mask of makeup and blood
Caked-up and confused, I stood
Scraped away at my crusted face

I'm surprised by the sweet words flowing from your swollen mouth
Because I know that you don't remember my name, but you say you love me anyway
I rub my skin raw
And scrub my teeth 'til they bleed
My mouth tastes like yours,
But you don't mean a thing to me anymore.

You sit up with a start
form outlined by the afterglow, or is that the sunrise?
We've been in bed for years it seems
and you're still unaware of me watching, listening
to the silent sobs and scratchy breaths
of the dream daemons that live in your lenses and tug your eyes cross and blind.

You've seen me unclothed, but I've seen you naked.
And you are beautiful.

Twenty-seven pennies drop
One for every week we spent holding on to silent summer nights
To wishes made on cigarette ash
Your name catches in my throat
As you breathe those four words:
It all spells disaster

With your fingers embedded in my veins
**** me until I no longer hate myself
Make me *** to a revelation
Urges and surges, that pain in my chest
It offers me quick release, but I deny myself yet again
Purging my old ways
I shake, I scream
A mirror broken in child's play offers the only explanation
My head is heavy, but still I'll hold yours steady

I don’t know why she was so easily frustrated
or why she spent hours on end,
at the end,
on the floor compulsively cutting
butterflies out of book pages.
I don’t know why she grew to hate her birthday so much
or why she seemed to become increasingly more and more indecisive.
I don’t know why she began to write those letters,
that jumbled, nonsensical prose
that tumbled, then rose again
only to fall again,
end and begin again.
What begins only just ends again.
And again.

I don’t know why I write in third person
or why I write these letters
or why I can’t make decisions
or why I hate my birthday so much
or why I’m burning these butterflies,
watching the flames feast on their wings.
And I don’t know why I think these things,
the things they say not to think.
But I think that the thoughts I think can’t just be unthought,
that thinking these things can’t be untaught,
like I can’t be untaught to love you.
And that’s where things get really confusing
because you’re not the you that I knew
anymore.
And I suppose I’m not the you that you knew anymore either,
but in my heart and somewhere in the attics of my brain
we’re together, alive again.

Turn the key and unfold me, darling.
My muscles ache from holding back from you for so long.
My fingernails miss your skin
My ******* miss your cheek
And my lips miss your hair.
But there are ghosts in our mattress now and your scent has long since washed away like the contents of my of my skin-bag down this drain, to the ocean. I used to believe it held the souls of the lost, those who believed not in gates or flames.
I know now I was foolish to believe that siren's tale, but the way the waves crash and shatter against the rocks mirrors the blade against my wrist and I know now I was foolish to believe in you too.

1.
Your love was words written in snow, and they melted into me, not a trace left in the morning as our bodies turned to fire beneath a thin sheet.
The waning heat as night fell returned with a palm to my cheek
And bruises on my throat
Colors that reminisced about sunset cigarettes
And fallen petals from roses cut off at the neck.
I wanted you to sever me in the same way.

2.
Head buried in the sand, I hoped my skin would absorb its hue.
Remember when we made dresses of leaves for cigarette **** dolls?
Those ******* were my friends.
You said that's why you didn't finish the last inch of your beers so I washed them back and watched you take miles and miles
Bottles breaking in quivering hands.

3.
I never minded the taste of blood, so I licked our wounds clean.
I'm beginning to question what "self-inflicted" actually means.

You should have brought me to the hospital that night
Instead you took me and I took another bottle of pills to try to better know that ever elusive quiet.
But quiet is a **** tease and you're meaningless to me.

4.
Silence and quiet are twins
Infantile in their ways
Two drunks stumbling through mounds of glitter from some winter parade.
Streetlights reflecting in their pale eyes
Frostbitten fingers itching at half-turned locks
Their sighs slip through doorjambs whispering of kisses and comfort
Weaving images of abandoned bathtubs into dreams of a lone child sleeping upstairs.
One who longs to be known, yet forgotten.

Watered-down lungs
I exhale the moonlight from a night of emptied bottles, of messages never found
Counting stars never was easier than when you filled your head so full of clouds
I envy you
And your knowing eyes dart to mine
Iron inside your chest, that heart of yours
Bone-weary, you wage ever onward
Teach me strength
Tell me I know nothing of truth
Cut back the seaweed in which I am so easily entangled and feast on my shame
Eyes roll back like the waves as you move over me
Sate this hunger and leave me hungover
Skin the color of dusk, lips ashen
Form broken, blood burning
My veins itch in a way they haven't in weeks
But it's your name I want scarred on my skin and I catch myself sharp
An open hand stings more than a pocket full of blades
Or posies
And I love you the way I leave the wildflowers untouched
But don't forget that it's always you I pick

There is too much

dust in my joints
ice in my bones
wind in my ears
and flesh between my fingers.
I want nothing more than to shatter
into the millions of stars you once said fill my pores.

A passage, one of right.
Clumsy heels raise to pointe and force me ever on.

The lights, bulbs of promise
And blades, sharp reminders.
It's just another thing hanging over my head, I remind myself
The house sighs and my throat catches fire
There's something in the air here.

The flowers are dying and I worry that I might be too.
I trade their water for well wishes and wash the smoke down with it.  
After all, black veins can't get any blacker,
I am what I am and I am tired of wagging tongues.
A stab is righteous, a slit is sin.
You bleed red,
But every colour flows in me at once

So tell me I know nothing,
I know not of truth.
State my transgressions and give me your transfusion.

It's the middle of May
And only when the sticky-sweet breeze caresses these stuccoed walls do they speak
They tell of silent tears
And unexpressed fears
And the way your cheek brushes mine
But the ocean-scent in my sheets has been replaced
With that of cat **** and *****
I am alone tonight
Old lovers replaced by cigarette highs, which are just as fleeting
But your eyes are the street lamps
Illuminating my bed through the blinds
And your touch echoes in my bones
As I whisper your name like a prayer
Before drifting into your arms again

All I want is to be like the flowers
To be picked for my beauty,
Kept for my fragrance,
Cherished for my meaning,
And light enough to blow away in the wind.

I’ll be your April if you’ll be my May
Where I end you begin

This spring will wipe out all winter rot
And maybe we can start again

Hell isn’t where the mind goes
when the body dies.
It’s where the mind finds itself
when the body stops living.

Let’s make our love by the glowing ashes
I’ll hold you tighter than they hold the heat.
I’ll breathe their warmth, your warmth
into the depths of my core
where shivers of sorrow hide
disguised as quakes of pleasure,
as aches to have you closer still.
Let’s make our love by the glowing ashes
for your warmth alone cannot save me
heat is not enough to heal
these shattered bones and frozen hands.