it likes to creep up
(get you execution-style)
maybe you're smoking your  cigarette
or
maybe you're drifting down the highway
and suddenly
the aimlessness of existence washes down your throat
(sick black tide)
and you must move from the pain,
leave it spinning out behind you
even though the hairs
have been raised
on your skin
(you must keep on)

you like your lips on my neck
and hate the knowledge of my cigarettes
mint, stale living in my hair
the great mass of it you like
to lose your fingers in
and i look at my body like the storyteller did
detached from my feet floating ten stories above them
and i've forgotten how to write and
i never liked to rhyme
and i'm rigid in your arms

dark jeans came up with big promises
but bigger eyes
so i stood on my toes and kissed him
with my hands in his hair like water
and i let his hand find my back
(tenuous buoy in the white water)
i breathed small and light
my spine aligned with brick
and bit your name into my lip

i love your stretched bones
and how you make me feel small
like my bones are just cartilage
and dust

you carve my ribs open with the spikes
on your jacket
(we glued them there next to the cigarette ashes)
and i'm pink inside, too

touch me in your shirt and hold on
lift me
i'll even take your tin-foil dreams
if you just come and find me

it's not what it looks like
no, i promise
it's not what it looks like
less of my relationship with gravity
and more how i occupy reality