it's almost as if everything is perfect, even if just for a moment.
maybe it's from the way you tilt your head back when you laugh,
or it's the familiar scent of watermelon rinds and petrichor in the air.
but mostly, I think, it's because of the safety I feel with you.
I can feel the fireworks detonate,
in my heart and my chest.
I flinch as a blur of colors light up the sky
but you wrap your arm around my shoulders
and let me know that everything is alright.
you lace your hand with mine and i lay my head on your shoulder.
"wake up," you say, "you're dreaming."
but I don't hear you.
all I can hear is the sound of our heartbeat, together,
and the explosion of fireworks.

that
which is breathed,
and blown

well
do not exhale me a soul

exile me
to the cold

impinging
sinking, stinging
pity

no

be brief;
be terse

without a kindness to me

cast me off;
trade the scald
for the scoff

no mercy

leave

go, love
go and love
at the cost of me

i. reward ten thousand dollars
it scares me to think you will drive me home one day, one night, one night when i am very drunk and the stars do not glisten because there are no stars left! i am sure of the reason:
upon being conceived you swallowed them all whole. this is not purposefully clandestine so much as misunderstood knowledge:
in our lifetime these celestial objects will be mistaken, much like a well-intentioned teratoma, for
cancer
countless times you will be plucked, yet unripe, from the fire that will as soon liquify your flesh and cleanse your soul

ii. wanted, dead or alive
psychosis is not a watershed.
it is an amalgamation of the bugs who have crawled up your legs and gorged themselves on your fruity blood before hibernating
it is a room of walls plastered with ******* of nauseating pale cadavers, of empty homes, of longing hands, of breast buds and tied legs and virginal lips and bare ***** and stained sheets
it was in you forever and there is nothing to blame but an imbalance, for
you are the duality of...girlhood.
you are soiled ******* and unkempt hair, abused plush dolls and sticky hands, infected wounds and sunburn sting, stale cereal and coloring pages
you are satin veils and vain slumber, tired tears and starving entrails, hesitant touch and static vhs, shrill laughter and breathy song
you are itchy bug bites. you are snow in my eyelashes.
you are a lissome angel pregnant, god bless you, with a fetal (fatal?) evil; perhaps my fear begins here, or perhaps it greets me when your aura bites my eyelids...alack!
it must be so. **** orange light suffuses my thin veins. the sun exudes apprehension and abruptly the car is totaled and
this is why you cannot drive me home. even when i have become quite inebriated:
it is not natural for the air to be so warm; only ere our galactic body closes her eyes.
surely you will **** me. you are no creature of the night. run me over; crush me between your toes; let my nectar grow trees in the cracks of this, our, every godforsaken town.

iii. have you seen me?
her neotenous thighs stick, like sap, to the concrete floor, water seeps beneath the cinderblock. dust collects between her fingers in which she clutches, with the brutality of youth, a softened - if garishly colored - carton of apple juice. four-o'clock sun pierces the thick glass window (if one will call it such) and she feels listless; rather than squint she pores over the illumination with intent that, in her unsuspecting naivete, she is not yet aware she holds. before she ***** in enough light to blind her she hears a voice that feels familiar:
come upstairs
soon enough it will be ruefully forgotten
soon enough she will realize she was bagged and thrown in the trunk
too late she will wish to exact her revenge

light pools in-between buildings
and she eyes the arches of morning through the blinds
sharp white through concrete divides

summer has lasted quite a while
or has it passed too fast?

anemone, daffodil, mid-august ebonies
terse and kind replies from well-trained staff

flags creep down, half-mast
crawling, as if there is shame somewhere

I can only hope
for hope
to ease some of the fear

prophetic, dread
candlelight or medicine
oxygen and antigens

but I've come in like a gust
something soft and raging

for now, it is enough

like smoke
you drift apart

its a sad old cliche
your braided hair
lost
in the glare of sunlight
turned
to obliterate

i hadnt looked in years
i hadnt looked in years
but there you were
caught in my mind
loved without remorse

just apart
radiant
refusing to exist

no media
no touch

erring the side
catching the wreck
this double standard won’t survive
so what’s the point?

the closest cliff is a ride away

red wine beads at my brow
I wait to wince

poppies dance out in the yard
in the little warmth from seasons since

her feet trail away
the broken magnum at mine

head, heat, blaring haze
scythes at the atlas of my spine

scorn and disgrace
raw and insipid

the sun turns its face
lends whatever light to the wicked

she said she'd put the fear of god in me
but god is not what I fear

not what oppresses my feet
nor the ache of my best years

he does not hang from her tongue
like the prize of her spiced ***

any vestige of will; any spirit, any trace
for any iota of refrain

quashed, quelled
concealed and contained

another fickle whine
another fleeting wish

any mistake I've made is mine
and hers are carried on the wind

she speaks like the end;
the war, and then what's won

no more sour a tend
than to the wounds of what's been done

the world armed to defend;
her foes a heavy sword against a throng so young

infantile infantry
ripened from infancy

what a weapon are my sons

what a kindness she's coughed up