I am stranger to the taste
of candor, honor, or courage

a bland and simple fruit.

Exceptional at nothing,
I am exceptionally nothing--

withered from the stem,
the whole way through.

However I have seen
the pallor in your cheek:
a tempting succulence.

Salvation rests beneath
your ripened skin.

I will break the unmarked flesh

I will learn

to be
honorable too,

once I have had

the whole of you.

I.
safe respite from a scary movie
i woke with bags under my eyes
heartbeats under dryer sheets

II.
you could carry me quite far
i loved for you to grasp my hands
they smelled of sweat and cinnamon

III.
first cigarette sixth kiss
you wrote me notes, i burnt them all
of you i do not speak

IV.
you whispered as i wore
your granite jacket; i have yet to tell you that
it's been my favorite color since

V.
you were damp new leaves
weathering fall's best storm
and i destroyed you just as completely

VI.
wet rain long fingers
i rest and watch you speak
i believe
you may be
the final sequence

Your eye
is the single thing.

I will fill it
with summer weeds
little stalks
no wrinkles
weighed with rain, like lungs of June.

I will fill it
with the hush of grass
swollen
with sun
your quiet lips like prayers, on my tongue.

You must never meet
puckered soil
wasted stems
no sickness
in this summer age.

Your eye will never fill
with these
trembling
wringing hands--
this ceiling without a star.

I will care for you.

I want to be
in a flesh warm home
with walls the color
of bone.

One of the homes
where ugly is kept
'neath fresh white faces

and all that lies
'hind lily frames
inevitably erases.

You always come to mind at dark.

Your flesh dissolves
through my open hands--

your scent becomes fleet
and pale.

Sometimes I'll inhale
a warm clove of you

but more often


I inhale you through.

I was told that the people you love
turn to ghosts inside of you
and like this, they survive.

But no one's ever told
how it feels to become the ghosts
that loathe being kept alive.

I've learned to submerge
in sparse droplets of
your scent and skin

I let them melt on my tongue
so that they may sustain
my body for months

I will bathe in this for a moment
but your fresh wet scent
will linger


and I refuse to quench this thirst

though I know I'm going to drown.