Late at night I mimic the moon
and begin my satellite circuit
from the pantry to the fridge
peering between limp celery stalks
and old jars of cocktail sauce
the same way you **** me
when you're bored and just looking
for a quick fix between
your next game of league of legends.

if every ghost of words i tore in half haunted half as bright as a single dot on your light bright
i'd be giving time square a run for its overpriced roasted nuts and candy bars that fell off the back of a truck
and if every time i dipped into my brain for a distraction and came out with nets full of your name
repetitive as the chord progressions in my favorite songs about being angsty and trapped in jersey
i could scatter it like chum on placid waters and wait for the grandfather of all predators to learn a few lessons from you
sometimes i think you're searching for the moon and i was just an imploding star burning dim
and i can't help but dredge my esophagus with poisons from boys who don't look like you since
i'd sooner explore the ends of sanity and edges of our folding universes than admit that you don't think this was real
i am pulsing with need for acceleration with a big stretch of stalactites beckoning like *****-willows
but all i can do is Stop.

maybe we could take a trip to one of those musical roads
that are cut to hum a tune

let our ears buzz away the dark thoughts threatening
slithering, come-hithering

slide inside my wisdom teeth set on edge
til my voice is honeybees and my throat a hive

now my whole body is a single note i can't sing
and my spine is b flat since

silence used to be my blinders but now it's garroting gas
and you keep telling me

that existence leans towards chaos as inevitably
as the force of crystallization

and the neat order we enjoyed is diffusing
and the bees are disappearing
so let's just be friends.

he keeps telling me i don't love him
that i think i do but i don't
that i couldn't or i'd do so and so
that i shouldn't anyway
that i wouldn't have left out
any aspect of my life i found unpleasant
he won't say it but he thinks me a liar
but i won't say either because he says
i make this up and put words in his mouth
so he asks me to explain what it's like
when my nerves bundle up so tight
and strangle my throat
and wrench my intestines
and why i hadn't fully explained
for four years

the best i can reply is that
this cold sweat and shakes
the revolving-door thoughts
merry-go-round panic
the bilious *****
the short quick breaths
and trembling lips
have become a routine
like washing my face
or brushing my teeth
so frequent that to mention it
seems below mundane

but i'd try anything for him so
without thinking too hard i'm writing about
how sometimes the roaring in my ears
fills my whole body like screams
of a person in agony i am helpless to rescue
and in my nightmares i watch someone else
plunge to the ground with wails like grappling hooks
and no music or lengths will drown
the siren call of the razor promising
relief at the expense of my dignity
a little quiet stolen from my future

i can't justify the selfishness of fear or
the cowardice of losing the best thing i've had
to the worst thing that has me
and though it was never my intention
maybe i misrepresented my strength
so i'll stare at the beer stain on my ceiling
when you shook up the bottle your third night here
and hope that when i dream
maybe this time
i'll be the one falling.

walking along the trash and ice filled streets of the upper west side every head is turning to look at him with his hand in my pocket like it's a crime for a portrait to be framed with driftwood like fat thighs and wobbling jaws.

sometimes i convince myself that i am projecting my attraction to his spider legs in skinny jeans and lilting accent whispering rainforests and crocodile beaches onto every girl we encounter but then--

we're in the bronx strolling through the frozen zoo a girl chattering on her phone goes dumb momentarily in the middle of a story as her eyes rake his Tam-Lin nose and James Potter hair and i can tell he's trying not to laugh when he glances sideways at me smirking and squeezed a love handle.

it's fashion week and models are strolling through central park with mannequin joints rattling in the cold and painted lips smiling and lashes batting and some boys with frosted tips watch his back jeans pockets with canary-caught satisfaction.

in east harlem at a dive with pitchers of **** as centerpieces, a swedish barmaid asks him for his number and serves me a skunked shandy.

the lady cop forgot to write my ticket after she checked his ID "so australia, huh?" as she sidles up to the dangling license plate and shattered headlights

in line for a coffee in my hometown two giggling teenagers have a carrying conversation "they fit together though, in a weird way like bert and ernie"

i love you, but walking with you is like wearing a sign reading "great personality, i guess" though you couldn't read it because the message is distended, stretched over x-acto scarred rolls and flopping flesh, gibbous ******* and bulging armpits

every eyebrow quirk and coy smile reminds me how absurd it is that you draw me close and tell me i smell like fire and my face is like a doll's and my hips serve practical purposes and my eyes are big as a sailor soldier and you lift me when we dance to tv themes and whine like a puppy when i forget to kiss you on my way out the door resonating inexplicable affection

walking alone through airport terminals not a single glance is wasted on me as i kiss you through baggage check so i take the final opportunity for invisibility with makeup smearing gusto and mourn how much braver i am when i am with you.

i came out of despairing with the help of two words
that kissed my eyelids and sighed smiles in my hair:
                                                                             at least
i can curl my toes in soft mud one moment and thousand count cotton the next
at least this is a world where hyacinths smell like forgiveness each spring
at least i have the luxury of dreaming
at least i can sit in sanctuary with my thoughts far from my safety
at least there are kids like aphasia spouting precisely what you know but can't think
at least strawberries taste like blooming on my tongue
at least there's a whole day devoted to mischief and my boy was born heir to april
at least  i can find solace in the belly fur of a sleeping cat
at least there's patience in sadness

the line between madness and genius is a pattern noticed a hair's breadth
too far from the crossing lines vibrating in our eyes
like cats raised vertically can't see horizons
i wasn't born to see this.

the contempt i coddle for my indulgence is missing from your cat eyes
but my what big teeth you have grandmother
better to taste generations with your elf-nose and cat smirk
that shoot starlight into mad minds.

sometimes i think i met lancelot in the wrong order
and that you're the proof that chaos makes art
and random patterns are madness made genius by attention
so forgive me for my suspicions.

how does the nervous insomniac love without reservation or doubt
chasing the sun through the tropic of aries
swilling words around in your mouth and in your teeth to soften ones
that i was born to believe.