I got a sore neck from resting my head on your shoulder.
I don't even mind, I would love to be close as the skies get colder.

My eyes are sore from not seeing you,
My heart is light with the joy of knowing this is all true.

I can't write my ******* essay,
I am too busy thinking of how I don't want you to stray.

My mind is sore from thinking about this spark,
My skull rings with this beat as I lay awake in the dark.

Hearing you say these words can be kind of terrifying,
But when you remind me you care, it is the sound of my world clarifying.

I want to be sore, I want to remember,
The way we were close, just fan the spark, don't put out the ember.

wind blown bodies
rush by flustered
and the diagonal
rain is exposed
under the one
streetlight

that feeling of waking
up and everything is
exactly the same

where has the warmth
gone? it is in that wood
stove with logs stacked
neatly outside the
uprooted tree did not
die for nothing

the only place to go is
back go back home
back to work back to
sleep back against the
wall

at night i used to hear
whispers clues and
remnants of an
unknowable beauty

now i walk always
with listless purpose
and it is loud but
empty the scraps
banished and i wake
up to the dreaded
sameness that robs
me of my body

oppression reigns
from above
unseen hellfire
a fallacy
can't be seen
so it is not there?

oppression exudes
from the ground
translucent, sticky
rise up and fight!
but always stuck
sinking down while
the tar fills open mouths

oppression is ingrained
in hearts blinded
by the masses
******* the lifeblood
from freely flowing veins

oppression is a paradox
making everything
too simple, too complex
too small, too big
too easy, too hard
closing in on both sides
follow the light
at the end of expression
lest you be crushed

withered eyes a
crescent moon of
dusk under the
pupils red lightning
cracking across
blank pages born
from some unseen
space beyond the
corners

when the head lolls
back the neck snaps
to refocusing on the
unseen nothing in
the physical to grasp
at looking through
all layers of deceit
at an inside a
center that cannot
exist but is always
there

motion is the mirror
the frame the negatives
rolling seamlessly teeth
and sprockets a perpetual
rotation immune to friction
faction and conflation

singular in its mindlessness
just an eye bloodshot with
nebulae as everything
collapses in on itself at the
speed of light passing
through the central retinal
vein feeding information
into the unseen center of all

as i sew
with bobby pins
no yarn
can be as soft as
your skin

I have to constantly tell myself that I didn’t love him.
I used him
he used me
for comfort, and comfort only.
I’ve only ever loved one human being in that way on this planet. 

And it’s okay
because when I tell myself I didn’t love him
I know we were in the same place.
Our chests were both hurting from someone else
hammering
nails
into
our
hearts.
We needed each other then
but we didn’t love each other ever.
A.p.