I can't stand ticking clocks;
They remind me of every second that
*you're not here

Try your hardest not to love people like me
I promise it will be worth the effort
To avoid a heart that beats as foul as mine does
One that will take you to the ugliest places you’ve ever seen
And have you dance in dirt and swirl in broken glass
But I’ll kiss you in those places
Every one of them- in such beautiful ways
You’ll start to think blood smells like my perfume
And that thorns are more beautiful than flowers
I’ll make you want me
In the way that a tyrant wants a kingdom
In the way that lions want antelopes
It will be maddening, it will make a savage out of you
And by the end of it when I leave
And surely I will
You’ll be a hybrid of a human
That hunts for hysteria and hungers for hostility
You’ll be so soiled by me
You’ll see the world as I do
You’ll understand a little more about things
And how awful everything is
You’ll know why we name hurricanes and not rainbows
And I’ll be one of the hearts worth the effort to not love.

Maybe I should be content
Perhaps life was being kind to me
It took everyone away gradually
Instead of in a handful.

I wrote you each August,
asking you to break the
tall, thick clouds into flat,
cold floes that vanish when
the sun vaults over them.

You bring your cool moon,
and it slides over my skin
from head to heel or hand
to hand. Cicadas feel it,
too. Like medicine on a cut.

I typically pause, let silent
vowels swallow the air
peeking around the curtain,
and until we feel fresher
by it, crisped, I stay still.

You test the leaves one,
two nights pulling with open
hands; I remember ice,
shattered on the pavement
and spread thin, whitens.