or-ange, mango,  
banana too,  
hell-bent on regretting you.  
campfire-chair-sitting on hardwood floors  
in a stranger's home, i think.  
turn off the lights, it's raining.  
i had some to drink (not enough)  
but you had to drive  
but so did i.  
turn off the lights, it's raining  
on the bannister,  
your piano-key-fingers cascading over my  
carpals, metacarpals, phalanges too.  
topple me into a room  
but today it's not for laundry,  
‘cause the only thing that's getting washed away
is my record of not saying  
i love you (in my head, because
strangers
don't say that to each other).  
you lassoed me in and we fell  
into the empty hangers that i pushed away from you;  
shadows on a skeleton’s scapula.  
tabloids never told me that three months’ salary couldn't  
buy the rights to the song  
of your heart beating darkly in your chest.  
turn off the lights, it's raining  
and you can't see the way i  
feel you.

i dressed up in my midnight-black everything
and showed up at your door with a handful
of wilted daisies.
i tried taking your arm but you chose to just walk by my side,
silent and cold and as frightening as a bolt
of lightning in the summer heat.
and so we walked along the cracked sidewalk,
both silent,
both afraid,
until we chanced upon a narrow creek running
frigid above sheets of blue-grey rock.
you jumped in and i followed suit,
but when i surfaced you were nowhere to be found.
i've been drifting ever since