You say we have the same eyes,
and I could spend eternity trying to wax poetic,
emphasizing ambers, honeys, and suns,
that can only mimic their radiance from our forms.
But they fall short of where my agony lives,
and I say agony because
lyricists say this is roller coasters,
ferris wheels, sunny days, and stormy nights,
where joy is the absence of suffering.
But somewhere in history,
four small hands grasped dirt and dust
only to find life inside,
abandoning philosophy for something more precious.
To think our fingertips have touched the same earth
is what the pious must feel before death.
How can you say we have the same eyes
when mine are wildfire tragedy,
and yours are January’s starlight?
When we were once rooted there was something shared,
only for it to be ripped from my body
to feel like a winter without snow.
I am undeserving, and yet
it will only be moments until I remove your ribs,
stealing ichor from the gods,
because it is my own vindication,
or perhaps,
the only thing I know.

And still, you only graze me like porcelain.

I am standing in the dim hospital hallway.

My soul has left her body and she is travelling
through a syringe tip,

squeezing life

from lung.

She pauses beside a broken skeleton
and admires his sunken eyes and feathery hair.
Edges along his arm cut the apparition to her bone
as away he rolls, like a cadaver
she loved before the dissection that destroyed it.

Then, sudden warmth in blue
behind her, smiling,

burning

in a language futuristic.

She recoils and responds, lizardlike,
cold, unfeeling,

full.

The ghosts snaps back inside me,
agitates my insides,
and I leave my dinner on the linoleum.

I am a vessel for the songs my father played
late in the night as I drifted through dreams.
The melodies, hanging in the air like twinkling stars,
faint and cool just before the morning,
enter my ears and set off fireworks among my cells.
As the snowflakes land softly on my eyelashes
on the darkest nights when noise is ****** away,
the weight of my steps falls in time to my breathing
long ago, curled away within my blanket,
surrounded by the mystery of the deep winter.

I am a protector for the songs my mother sang
in the dim light of spring evenings when the wind blew warm.
And I, in little yellow sundress with dirt between my toes,
grew, a stubborn **** before the windows
that spoke her poetry in tendrilled flowers of sound.
On days when orange light oozes through the leaves
And fire fills my chest in rage and glory,
Rustling breezes take me towards piano’s edge
Where the smell of molding notes and yellowed melody
Stands stagnant in the glowing haze of summer.