You are strings of pearls that cross thresholds between worlds
Little beads of ecstasy threaded through debris
You’re a smile in the morning when the sun is fresh and bright
You are scratches in the dark when the day has turned to night

We crave a comfort that touches us like silk
But are afraid of a softness that loosens our skin
There is safety to be found in spaces that are filled
And emptiness tastes bitter when there aren’t hands left to sew you close
Do you find solace in other peoples heartbreaks?
Or are you yearning to let go of your own?
Do you crave promises because you know you can’t keep them?
Can we really find a comfort in someone else’s bones?

Eager flesh finds ways to claw in memories when nails are stripped to the skin.
Find pieces left with torn edges like tragedies but don't let your demons in.

Weave vines through your ribs and roses through your eyes, for this life you'll have to fare.
Cemeteries feel so empty without your bones to bare.

And I beg you to bury the parts of yourself that remain unclean.
I only want your sin if its in between my sheets.

You’re all bones and no talk.
All dislocated ribs and shackled thoughts.
Contain them contain them, don’t you dare let them escape.
Hold on to what makes you broken, I’ve heard broken thoughts carry less weight.
So guard your bones that home your soul.
Sharpen your ribs and polish your throne.
Count the minutes and the hours and the seconds as they go.
You can’t expect royalty when you’re six feet below.

Men with your sort of name are dangerous.
The way each letter makes your tongue work as if it knew you would never be easy.
The way you sound sharp and ready to break me like the bones you wear.
You carry the weight of ghosts I'll never know, the way each vowel kisses the next.
Men like you are dangerous, and your obscurity makes you all the more sinister

You’re all skeletons and veins
(or something like that)
Just a pile of bones hanging on an empty frame
With walls that feel too close for comfort
(You romanticize the dark as she sings your name)
I want the moon to light up your bed
And your flesh as we wait for the dark
We’re counting empty minutes so we can feel our ribs as they sink
Finding empty beds of flowers and empty bottles and empty seats
Stones carved in cemeteries with graves emblazoned with no names
Skeletons and souls, we are hanging hearts on empty frames

You hover in the space between heaven and hell praying that if there’s a god he lets you in.
And your vain attempt at kissing darkness only gets you through this life with one foot in reality and the other foot in your grave.
Darkness doesn’t promise anything except blurred edges and escaped time and there comes a point when pity doesn’t look pretty, even on you.
So hold yourself to esteem higher than the lords, and pray that your ego will be the death of you.

I have been told
Twice
By two different men- that I am the most defensive person they’ve ever met.
My skin too thick and my tongue to sharp
(I am supposed to be easy and soft.)
But those men didn’t tend to the garden of my mind or flesh.
They never sowed the seeds I have spent years tending
Or even tried to open the gate I have built with my calloused hands.

Do not judge this mind if you aren’t willing to ******* soul.
There are roses here that don’t need any other hands to prune.
And never forget-
I am of the moon and stars.
The rivers of this body don’t need your approval.
I was never meant to be the clay molded in your hands.

I taste like heaven and hell.

Like the nightmares you had where you were left in the middle of the ocean.
Drowning
You woke up crying.

Or the one where you watched everyone you loved die.
But
It was you shooting.

I taste like the hidden corners of your closet where you keep your diaries.
With pages filled with how you’d touch me.

I am the burnt sugar on the edge of the pan.
The drops of ice cream that leave your fingers sticky.

And she said:
       “ I have been here before
   Swimming along your rocky shores.
And I have felt your waves echo along my ribs
and beat along my heart.”
I have
       seen you in sandy planes like Mars.
                (You) have transported me to a world I feel but can’t remember.
I have
           wandered here along these rows of pines.
            They turn their faces to me like ghosts I’ve spoken to
            but remain nameless with unfamiliarity.

But I have felt these tremors once before.
walking along your rocky shores.

Find yourself among the sea.
(We all know you'd **** to be clean)
You're dissolved memories rotting with purity
Unobstructed details of a killing spree.

You're ragged knots hanging in the tree
Vain attempts at writing new memories.
But god my god, you're too blind to see
Hell is with you in your veins as you sleep.

So bless me, or curse me, really
Whatever's easiest for you.
Your gut wrenching sorrow is getting old, too.

Do me a favor
Just once for me, please.
Count your blessings four by four by four
And with the scripture you hold to the highest degree
Shout to the condemned what exactly it is that you see.

I have written about you on napkins in coffee shops and restaurants that traverse continents.  I've written your name on foreign pages in cities you'll never be, at least not with me. I've etched your name onto trees but your initials always feel out of place alongside my own, or at least that's how it seems. You have always traded a taste of ink for words you'll never let me read. You're darkened melancholy that you think tastes too sweet. You had me, oh you had me and I've written down the verse. But the tape is skipping, the record is broken, a melody and a curse

I want it slowly.

Like smoke
Creeping from your chimney.
Like you- a house lived in once but
Abandoned all too quickly.
I want to be those bricks laid
one by one
meticulously.
I want your sin to move me.
I want your bones to break me.

I want it heavy
Like the bags of stone you gave me.
Quartz and onyx or an attempt to save me?
Like you- molten flesh cooled quickly.

I think I would die to have your soul inside me.

I was told once that apathy was in my blood.
Climbing like squid ink midnight black through the ocean begging for the forlorn sun.
I have seen atrocities in these veins of mine, calling to the moon for forgiveness, I have howled a hollow cry- it has made my bones crack.
There is no room in these ribs for complacence. For apathy or for those who don't protect the petals of the heart that I wear like a fruit ripe for picking.
I am delicate but I am not hollow. I am full to the brim and I will run my tongue across the dripping pearls of honey which leak from my sides when roses coated in gold ***** me with their thorns.
I am not scared of the weight I must hold to carry these onyx bones.  I am not worried about apathy. I am not worried about the way my blood will curdle when it is tainted with poison or lust or desire. I am not worried about the way that I will sound when my heart is ripped from my chest and held between calloused palms.
I have never worried about the song I will sing when I have nothing left on my lips except the shallow cry I will leave to the world- the one that says
I have loved and I will never have to be enough for you.

Romanticizing fantasy or refusing to see what’s in front of me-
It has always felt the same.
I have never been scared of silence and stillness
But I’ll take it back again.

I will steal your soul and bones without condition.
Like barbed wire rooftops-
I would kiss your sorrow sans inhibition.

So take me or break me, it's really all the same.
I'm the mirror that shattered and sliced your fingers
                         -your favorite superstition.

Crush me between your fingers-
I will smell like fallen leaves.
Soft on autumn mornings I was caught between your teeth.
And I wove myself into your sweaters that you wore to stop the breeze.
Your cold set in my bones and I think I’ve lost all heat.

"With that body you should get whatever you want"
And I am not just this body.
But
With this body I hold a heart that has loved flesh stretched across continents
A beating monster misunderstood but listened too, with teeth rigid and shined like opal or mother of pearl
A pounding prophecy promising something else, something else, something else is waiting beyond every time I have felt for the off switch with tired eyes
With this body I hold a mind stark in its quest for answers
One that does not settle on maybes or tomorrow or partial answers
A mind persistent in its pursuit for wholeness for oneness for connection to other tanks of skin covered bones with minds and hearts that beat and pound and pursue just as hard
With this body I hold a soul that is as vast as the cosmos.
Stardust sunken in long necked jars lining across my ribs whispering answers that my mind cannot read and my heart is not yet ready to see
This body homes a soul that is part moon, part star, part divinity.
One that finds its homes along stretch marks and supple flesh alike
One that is not dictated by the way I clothe or unclothe my skin
With this body I should get whatever I want because this body is a home and it has never been empty.

I have nimble fingers that creak and crack at the thought of weighted limbs and tangled flesh.
Like the waxing moon pulling off each of my nails-
One by one.
I am scared of climbing with broken hands.
I am versed in lust but love I have only thought of as
dripping
From my tongue after morning tea.
I am not who I think I am at all-
I have always been afraid of lovers who pull the zipper of my flesh.
I am not as naked without my clothes as without my bones.
I have always worn them crooked.

I want pieces of you like the landscape that surround your bones.
I want you like the moons that engulf your soul.

I want pieces of your mind engraved in mine.
I want each continent of your flesh pressed against my own.

I want your teeth cutting boundaries of where no one else can go.
I want my body to be a Mecca but only for your own.

Lying on my stomach I remember the way your fingers felt unbuttoning my flesh.
The way your teeth left cursive along my spine
Beckoning me to open like a book that you were never allowed to read.
I will unfold for you with the promise that you will only sign your name in blood
Along the edge of my sanity and only if you take me out of my mind.
I am not looking to lay anywhere except six feet under
Where I can feel your fire without fear of burning myself with your flame.
So I beg you-
Cover me in gasoline
Strike me where you please
And leave your sigil in my ashes.

My body sounds like an ocean
Like waves kissing the shore
The way my flesh stretches round my bones
In an embrace that whispers “till death”
Like a lover who chooses herself
I have picked you over and over
And like the shoreline
I
Will
Never
Stop
Chasing
You

You’re movements in the earth trembling like unsteady stars
You pull my limbs apart like planets orbiting a dying sun
(Tell yourself the truth before you get cut off)
There’s petrified stardust immortalized in your blood
You claim to own the nighttime like she’s a war that can be won
Counting down the minutes until darkness shows her son
A soldier versed in a song unsung

You are tangled memories and oh my god you had your grip on me. You planted your seeds and wrapped your fingers around my ribs and warped the cage that homes my heart, my tragedies. You tangled my flesh and stole my skin and I think that’s a sin- you were always my favorite sin but you lost me oh my god you lost me and you left me in the cemetery to decay in the breeze. You’ve gone and left to find your home in someone else’s veins but you’ll never find bones that break quite the same as the ones that I wear. You were gas stations and memories and cigarette smoke you kissed onto me. You were gin and sin and poetry read in your bed as your flesh was pressed against me. You were rooftops and coffee shops oh my god you were mornings of lazy limbs and tangled trees-you were the nights I couldn’t sleep. You had your chance to be with me and lost your grip and set me free.

If my flesh had a language it would be cooed in stretch marks.
My skin would spill its secrets in a whisper
Saying
"Look and see how much you've grown.
How beautiful you're woven, like a tapestry of love and stardust.
And I think you should know there are
no
mistakes.
Every crook and crevice of your soul and bones are adored.
Wear your marks like kisses from the cosmos.
Every inch of your body is like opal gleaming in the sunlight"

I let the television play as I write
So I can forget all the static in my brain so I can forget all the buzzing in my ears
So I can forget all the thoughts running over and over.
You’re a rerun I’ve grown tired of but you’re on a channel I can’t get rid of.
I’m stuck and I wonder if I’m stuck on you or-
If maybe I just ran out of batteries.
I think your empty chatter feeds the emptiness more than the blood does in my veins.
You’re the sort of memory etched on my flesh that I turn the television on to forget.

Bless yourself, you ended up in my poetry.
You call them poems, after all, and I'm sure you know this is as close as you'd get to having me.
Cast away the demons you claim sleep under your bed.
You know that even after making my skin crawl that you're all in my head.

Father, son and holy ghost-
The only thing I believe in are phantoms, but you already knew that didn't you.
So what's so cathartic about the way  you cleanse me of my sins?
Do you mask mine in your own, does my purity make you feel clean?

You're the darkest night when the stars don't want to be seen.
Laying ice upon my spine you see that maybe I'm not right for your skies.
You're stitches in my side from a crack that didn't show.
You touched me to pieces but even you have to go.

I think my heart may rip out of my chest.
Today I woke up feeling like I was still asleep. I don't think I washed the dreams off my skin.
I am typing with a bandaged finger, a testament to my carelessness.
I don't know how to guard the things that matter most. I am casual. I am not careful enough.
I don't know how to hold onto things before they change.
I am a human wearing a chameleons skin but I am not predisposed to adaptation.

Coo words at me one more time-
I've never been keen to believe you.
Knotting promises into cord to cut me,
I'll never be someone you're a part of.

The lies my flesh has told you
Has put me at risk for you to fall in love with.

But I am not responsible for the way my body shatters your expectations.
You cannot shame a sinner without a shame for sin.
Or a lover in love with the way her body bends.

And the silence I keep for the way you make me quiver
Is not an excuse to make your misery quicker.

I have loved and lied to plenty of men
The biggest I've told is "it's not in your head."

I exist in a dimension you deserve no part of.
My love is eternal but you've only ever been lusted for.

You think you know me. But you see only what I show you. A reflection of the symphony inside my ribs, caged for eternity in a heart that you feel beating but will never hear.

I have shown you what is lost. I hope for redemption besides your flesh but I am not looking to be saved by you. I use you the same way you use me. At night, the darkness peers in and I allow it to consume me, the way you consume me.  Bite by bite. Inch by inch. Slowly.

I am a jungle and you must cross my tangled flesh intentionally, carving out a path decisively or you will be lost under the moon without any sympathy. I dare you to find a forest more treacherous than that of my heart. A territory uninhabited. You are a savage and I think I’d let you in.

The golden seal you've placed at the end of your tongue
Comes undone at the edge of my teeth.
And I peel it back
Slowly
At First
Like a fruit too delicate to eat.

I've worked for hours trying to unwind it.
An incandescent veil beckoning me to cross it.

"Can't you see what you've done?"
But my bones have been stripped for years.
They've been leafed in silver, chrome like a future I want no part of.
Still, like the way you looked at me.
When I pulled away your molten flesh and left you exposed with nothing but your sin to greet me.

I felt the Strawberry Moon on your fingertips. You traced it on the palm of my hand. Your magic is different, I felt it, it was softer than I’ve ever been. You touched me and I felt velvet crushed against my skin. I heard my heart stutter your name and then cower against my ribs again. You draped yourself along the lines of my hands and I can’t, I can’t, I can’t seem to let you in. I am an open palm waiting for a knife and my fingers curl against the blade without a fight. But for you, I have melted and left a stain on your skin. I have felt the trace of your fingertips and I wonder if I’ll ever get back to how I was again. Your strawberry rays have captivated me, I swear, I know nothing like you. You wrote your secrets on the palm of my hand but I couldn’t understand the language you left them in.

All I want for dinner is you.
To taste leftover Chinese food on your tongue.
I have always been easily amused- but you- you not so much.
So I will wrap you delicately and consume you inch by inch.
You will taste like coffee and lavender lemonade. Like 2am French fries and insomnia.
Your flesh will feel like tired limbs and early mornings. Like hesitant kisses and Full Moons.
You will be warm. Warmer than me- so warm I may melt.

Calling me “too much” is a lazy way of saying
You don’t know how to fan the flame of your own fire.
Does my brilliance upset you?
It’s not my fault that the anger runs through my blood like a snake
That settles at the base of my spine
And infuses my light with a red tinted hue
That screams I am NOT to be messed with.

The tongue I hold in my mouth is as sharp as a dagger
And it can spit barbed wire as easily as it can French kiss.
To deny the way I ****, destroy and scream
Is to deny the way I make love and sing universes into creation.

I am not white or black magick.
I am chaos magick.
And I will destroy as I sing Kali’s name,
And hang the heads of men like a garland around my holy throat.

You’re my favorite word.
And I could take you in endless combinations
Letters lining your spine like a poem you read as a child
The one where you had felt love for the first time
But had forgotten that this is what it sounded like.
You are like medicine
That I didn’t know I needed but needed.
Your warmth is like the summer air.
And I think you taste like the rain in the moonlight.

I found you sitting along the pages of your favorite book, on my bookshelf, replacing your favorite words with question marks and X's.
I think you wanted your flesh to be as easy to read but it wasn't.
Instead you took trains to faraway towns so you could find names for the words you could feel but not spell.
And you found home along skeleton streets empty with memories, ghost towns that mirrored your hometown but felt harder to leave.

I want to give you the space to exist, to settle into the cracks on wood panels and floors that have heard your footsteps in and out again. I could ask you once or twice, where your body goes when your mind’s asleep and where your voice sings to the heavens in moments where your body feels weak. I am afraid of the answers and the places you escape, the darkness is kinder and a muse that will never break. You have existed in mountains and suns glistening anew but like a supernova or a dying star I won’t know about you until I am gone too. I could ask you in the moments when your body surfaces from ocean tides where it has gone in the Summerland, but the realms you travel are dangerous and you dare not hold my hand. But I have lived a life and a half for you, or perhaps with, but you have never swept my bones of stardust across your tired cheeks. I shall not miss the forlorn darkness you were too scared to keep.

You're like the sweetest apple that has ever graced my lips.
Like Eden.
I could eat you for hours.
And taste every inch of your bruised flesh
(and love it all the same)
Nirvana is
nothing
Compared to the nectar that I have found in your skin.
Even at your core you're heavenly.
Temptation couldn't escape you even if she tried.

You are west. Black oceans and dream worlds
Laid out like mystic landscapes along ridges of desert that become transparent
Against luminous flesh under moonlight.
Tapestries woven from threads of destiny and braids of sunlight and
Crystal crafted witchcraft that ventures into Hades.
The deepest black in ink ridden scrying bowls
That sing of kaleidoscopic visions and prophetic daydreams.

There have been hearts of mine that have cracked under the weight of easy love.
They hold a melody that I have hummed over and over.
Sometimes it begins slow,  like waves crashing on an empty shore.
Sometimes they haunt like a ship with a sail set fire.
I wonder where I will find the next incarnation because I am starting to tire.
The faint ring of intoxication has all but left my soul dy.
I hold a heart who screams in anguish at herself and every lover.
I home a soul too big for this body,
And she craves a song to live by.

You are wilted
And I have found you climbing iron lattices that I have only known in passing
Like the forget-me-nots you’d pick the petals of
“He loves me
He loves me not”
If only I could become immortal.

You have a traveler's soul.
And a mind that wanders just as restlessly
As a ship lost at sea
Refusing to sink and become forgotten.

You have the eyes of hand woven tapestries
Hung on the walls of childhood homes.
Laden with memories and first kisses
Riddled with promises and Sunday afternoons.

You have the bones of a life felt from the other side.
A spirit touched by what it means
To be human
And what it means to be broken.

My life is a work of art
But it has never been scripted for you.
It doesn’t have to taste sweet on your tongue.
It doesn’t have to be soft or comfortable.
You do not even have to enjoy it.
No.
My life is not for you to consume numbly.
It is not meant to be a safe space for you to form opinions.
I am still carving out the obsidian I’m crafted from.
And I do not have to listen to you to know where to chisel.
I have never written for you. Or loved for you.
With you maybe, but not for.
My life is not meant to be eaten like an apple
Whose core is too harsh.
I am poison.
And I never told you to taste me.

My body is my altar and I'll let you worship at it if you want
But you shall not find any holy books along the shelf of my ribs
You will not find any ancient scriptures along my spine
You will not find any commandments carved in stone except
"I worship at a temple with closed doors
I worship at a temple that belongs to itself
I pray to an altar thats last candle has burned but there is no darkness here
There is no yearning to be lit
I worship at a temple whose stillness should not be mistaken for emptiness
I worship as an artist overcome by his muse

You’re angular asymmetry caught in the in between
Black holes and dying stars in a universal tragedy
I wanted you to banish but instead you banished me
And now I’m writing letters to shadows of what you used to be

You make me feel like a wolf under the full moon.
I am howling for you.
I am calling for you.
I am trying to live in the way you make my skin curl and shed. I have never seen anything like you.
You make me feel like I am the ocean-
I know nothing but to surrender to your push and pull.
(I have never been a good swimmer)
You make me feel like I am going out of my flesh for you. For feeling like I am the only one who wants to see your craters or the way you move yourself against the inky black sky.
I cannot be the only one who is weak to your gravity, but I swear, you will never find someone who floats like me.
Or breaks like me, even. I am stardust captured in skin and bone. You are the moon and I am your own.

Come and look at the way my skin sheds at the sight of the setting sun
And see the stars placed along my vertebrae
Settled
In nooks your fingers will never touch.
Trace the outline of the skin along my thigh with a gaze
Shaded
By eclipses.
Breathe the scent upon my flesh settled with stardust and your fetishes.

I am trying to unweave the narrative that I've written in my mind that says pride is a sin.
That says- other people have the right to love your body but I do not.

And I am trying to navigate the space between where I see my body, and how others see my body because I've been told it's not a space that is safe for swimming.
The water is too deep too rocky to salty for life.
For me.

I am not scared of drowning anymore.

Come kiss me.

I will put away my teeth for you.

I will find the softest part of my skin and let you touch it.

I will not be hard or walled up.

I am spinning around myself and talking in foreign tongues.

So I can find a way to tell you-

I am hurting but I am still enough.

I grow gardens between my thighs
and bloom roses red like rubies.
My spine is lined with barbed wire for those who dare to climb me.
I bleed rivers of deadly nightshade
and sharped thorns between my shoulders.
Every inch of this golden body is dripping in amber honey.

It felt like the cement floor had open me up and enveloped me like a rib cage longing for a heart. I was slightly out of grasp, or just slightly out of touch. I have never heard the night sky sing like this with sadness or the cooing creak of cicadas. The red church sat with judgmental green doors blinking at me as strangers walked the steps inside to see a home I have never known or wanted. I have never needed that sort of love. The medicine I have tasted comes from binges of technicolor cartoons on nights that lasted too long. Time has been running out since it started and I can’t tell if it’s better to count what was or what will be. And the church with its emerald eyes has sat with its gaze cast at my window, as if to say I am picking wrong I am picking wrong. I cannot escape the anvil that straps itself to my chest when I go to bed. Maybe someone is praying for me.