Before I met you
my lungs were filled with sea water
my brain left fried from ******* back lines
my heart was tattered torn and bruised
but you came in
took me in your arms
pumped the fluid out of my lungs
made me no longer want to feel numb
held my heart in tender hands
and made me feel whole again

Rain keeps pouring on my side
Water runs cold as ice
Still it cannot be mistaken
With the tears in your eyes

I see you staring back
Thinking something has gone wrong
I understand your confusion
I feel your pain but I wish you were strong

You keep trying to see through me
See the light at the end of this darkness
You cannot ignore me and my angst
Take one look at me, I’m harmless

I know it’s impossible to recognize me
Through those glassy eyes unknown
So just close them, look inside you
Open them now. We are home.

Do you see me now?
It may seem the end of the world delayed
But a new smile will appear tomorrow
The rain will stop and your tears will fade

Can you see me now?
I’m just you, looking from the blurry outside
Wishing we didn’t have to feel this way
Wishing I’d see the storm perish inside.

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, - but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?


- These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lings that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.


Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
- Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
- Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

Removed for literary journal submission.

i've been building sentences
for you, because there are
too many words to keep them
stagnant and docile.

oh, words on melancholy smiles,
chipped porcelain and
sunlight dappled through your hair
like the sun herself had
kissed the crown of your head.

i've been writing you letters
inside of my head. little golden
pinpricks of love
seeping through my cells
because my body cannot hold
the very idea of loving you.

in those moments, i am liminal,
held tight by the arch of your spine,
the pads of your fingers,
the way that you held my name
in your mouth before
it rolled off of your tongue and
the smell of your skin
in a dark room, with only
the moon watching us
woefully, sweetly.

words like saccharine and
your name, slow like honey,
taste sweet enough
to make me cry.

i've been stuck on the idea
of loving you, loving me
and wringing my hands
over bad luck, mon petite chou.

and still, you close your eyes,
clasp your hands over your ears
and brush off my words like
dust or snowflakes or
unrequited love.

You trace the
stretch marks on my hips
with your fingertips
silently challenging me with your eyes to
keep still.
I have not the concentration or the will,
and my fingers
find their way into your hair,
pulling you closer
and closer to me.

Until

the only distance between us
is the invisible ocean dividing
our souls from one another,
A distance that cannot be crossed by a simple
mingling of breaths.

And yet, we persist in these attempts,
too stubborn to admit that we are both
beginning to tire of swimming.