backseat baby,
press your strawberry lips
to my wolf throat and sing
like the full moon.  
backseat baby,
i’ve got a half eaten heart
bleeding out, staining my
wooden hands as they draw
hearts around your ******
mouth.
backseat baby,
they say lovin’ makes
you weak, makes you a
monster, makes you
a freak.  

and baby, im all three.

backseat baby,
you’ve got your holy claws
in holy places.  making ‘amen’
taste like blood on the lips.
backseat baby,
i’m sin in the skin and my
black soul is starved for
your candle lit collarbone.
backseat baby,
they’re watchin’ us through
the window, watchin’ you-
watchin’ me.

and baby, we’re a freak show.

backseat baby,
your knees are porcelain stars
against black leather.

backseat baby,
we’re poisoned tongues
fighting, knives and guns,
wrists against hipbones.

and baby, what a sweet,
glorious and thrilling
death.

the pulse in the palms
of shaking hands, reaching
–always reaching

for the
sea as she carries away
a bottled message, floating
–forever floating

the horizon
grows in midnight eyes
a new sun, rising
–always rising

and the
old chests of vacant lovers
will root us, blooming
–forever blooming

in the
sea, we are wrecked tragedies
wooden-hearted boats, sinking
–always sinking

it tastes
like the sweetened rage of defeat
but keep those sails, adjusting
–forever adjusting

we’re not
drowning, we’re surviving.

we talk, but we’re not saying anything; we’re
just tracing circles with our tongues and hoping
it somehow it says enough.  maybe if we say
the same things over and over again, we can
make something out of our endless nothing
--but darling, i don’t think it works that way

we write, we teach ourselves to talk in tongues;
reciting words we cannot say out loud, twisting
them into some sort of meaningful display of
the truth.  maybe we’ve been dancing around
our lies too long, making fires out of matchstick
promises. apologies are hard, sure, but it’s even
harder to mean them, darling.  

you can ask me over and over again:
“what is it that you long to hear?”

and i’ll keep saying:
“if you don’t know by now, what’s the use?”

we talk, but we’re not saying anything.
we exchange apologies like handshakes
--and darling, i don’t think it works that way

we were weathered,
torn and frayed, we were
midnight skies with the stars
ripped out.  we were broken
knees, busted lips, and
heaving lungs.  we were
neck deep in the water,
we were floating against
the horizon and the tide
was chasing after our
last breaths. we were
clasped hands, shooting stars
against the gravity of time.

we were old and we
were infinite.  

but it’s only a dream,
disposable camera wishes.
fragile lashes wake to another
empty room, ghost kisses
against the back of the neck.  
it’s a graveyard nightmare, skin
crawling with the need to stop
living–just to feel alive again.

because as fate would have it,

we were young, and we
weren’t as endless as we
liked to believe.

we didn’t love each other, but
we loved wasting time.  loved
pretending to be the sun in the
big blue sky, loved dressing up
in stars and charading through
midnight hours, like a summer
love song.  

we didn’t love each other, but
for a moment we could almost
pretend we did. could believe
that somehow we were these
untouchable g o l d e n promises
and we were just trying to make
believe that lies were fairytale villains
we could

--actually escape.

sometimes you’re so busy trying to mop up the mess of someone else’s grief, that you forget to spill your own tears.  sometimes they dry up and fade away before they ever find courage to fall.  yet, they come to laugh when you’re not looking, haunting the back of your tired eyelids.  

don’t spend your life trying to swim in someone else’s ocean.  not when you’re drowning in your own.  

and yes, maybe they cry louder.  maybe their heartache bleeds a deeper shade of red-- but don’t let it quiet your own cries and don’t let it paint over your own hurt.

and if no one else has told you this, then hear me now--

     1. you’re allowed to feel what you feel
     2. you don’t need anyone’s permission to grieve

own your tears. they have value, even if someone else’s pain has made you believe otherwise.

we were born between
the ribs of our last
breaths, ones that made
ghosts out of us

this isn’t a haunting, darling
no–it’s just the opposite
you are my north star
and forever I will follow
in life and in death

i’ll make a casket out of
the backs of your knees
the ones that bend as you
whisper a litany of devotion
to me, to us

and so it goes, just as
it’s always been–
when you wake, i will wake
when you sleep, i will sleep
neither of us, brave enough
to face a moment without

we will die, just as we were
born, my love.  on the slow
exhale of our mirrored lungs
and the warmth of our bodies
will mourn for our departed souls

come morning, we will
shed our moth wings
and search for the heat of
a new sun.