I wish I could make music with my words
and spin a beautiful arpeggio, piano-piano web:
a breath-taking composition of minor cords
and soft leaps over thick ivory keys
that sing under my fingers.

I wish I could create an embrace
entirely of music. An embrace to hold
and to love and to kiss sweet, sweet joy
right into your ears.

I am desperate for that tender, hungry touch
and the heavy gasp of his saturated lungs,
as he burns me with the fire of his stare
and the hot sting of his palms
cools like tingling fever on my skin.

Unholy light, dim with secrets
two angels
grappling in the endless black.

Hand clasped tightly within my chest

a vicious strangle-hold of love

constricting and welcome*



                                         My tender heart.

I do not love you at all.

You're nothing more than a nuisance, a wound
that does not scab for days, stinging
and scarring - the excess ink smudging
my palm, grey scuff on white plaster.

You are no thorn in my side, merely
the splinter snapped at the skin after
several failed attempts of removal.

Loose thread, forgotten lyric, dripping tap,
incessant beeping, flickering fluorescent light
on a dim, graffitied train, spray painted
in "*******"'s, typo on the final draft.

I don't love you, never loved you at all.

I feel coldness within me,
the gentle thrum of my quiet heart.
Frantic, muffled beating,
that hums against my ribs,
gaining momentum,
as pupils swallow irises;

all consuming blackness.

Clothed in endless fibers of unsolved equations,
my skin is every A, B, C+ I've ever had.
My tongue and teeth carved from
over-used quotations.
Hair of flowing shreds of wasted time.
Eyes of burnt projector lights.
Red ink corrections on my lips.
I wear my science textbook heart on my sleeve,
dissected and un-beating
in your unyielding grasp.