your fingers have
the perfect crater knuckles,

winding with curves of understanding,
soft ridges aligned.

the gentle embrace of these masterpieces
wrapped around my palm (one inch smaller than yours)

reminds my heart
of your indefinite complexities.

those eyes,
finest mahogany,

textured with your past,
connect our souls, braided.

you are frozen coffee
with an espresso shot.

you are the youthful spring breeze,
cooling my skin to the touch.

thank you for teaching me how to love again;
squeezing me in the dark.

i am truly yours
and you are truly mine.

to my love who’s away:

there are fireworks here.

we can smell sulfur in the air.

my skin is tan now.

the leaves outside my window flutter in the warm maritime air.

do you remember when we would wake up to seagulls?

your eyes looked like the sunrise.

i miss waking up in your arms.

i watched your warning apparition
consume your earthen eyes.

your warning apparition,
your exposed shadow,
the slowness of your breath.

this spirit inside your chest,
ever expanding,
constricting the blood in your lungs.

pale, skinny face.
you could never get enough sleep,
left your clothes on the floor.

can you breathe now that you’ve left?

has the fog trapped in your ribs dissapated?

has my absence made it easier to fill your lungs with love for someone else?

you told me that you wanted to save me from the emminent warning apparition.
you said it would make you mean.
make you silent.
make me hate every cloud you’d ever seen
because it gave you the wrong idea.

i may have acted impulsively
in dragging my knees through the gravel,
but it was only because
i thought you would see my kneecaps,
scarred and bleeding,
and lift me from the ground.

i can’t walk down congress street.
i see the warning apparition
sitting on the bench where i sat,
watching you sprint to me,
arms spread because you got out of work.

i see it laying in my bed.
the left side.
wishing that just once it would haunt my dreams,
so i could truly feel your sleeping embrace one last time.

i can’t take a shower.
i’m washing your face.
i can’t go to work.
you aren’t home to come back to.

your warning apparition
is not your fault.

nobody asks to be haunted.
not by a truly vengeful ghost.

you are warm.
2. you are so gentle with me.
3. your eyes are of earth,
4. and the garden in my chest flourishes.
5. you are having *** while it’s raining,
6. and i have never more truly made love.
7. you take the water out of my lungs,
8. and i am no longer drowning.
9. laying on your chest is being at home.
10. you make me want to wake up,
11. just so i can study your sleeping mouth.
12. our souls belong near one another.
13. i love it when you drive my car,
14. one hand on my thigh.
15. you smile and i squint,
16. for you have the light of a dying star.
17. we are both supernovas,
18. we burn brightly,
19. and even after i smolder i’ll be holding your hand.
20. i will intertwine my fingers with yours into the afterlife.
21. there is nothing better than being close to you.
22. you have handed me a life vest
23. and shown me how to float.
24. i love it when you snore,
25. and you love me more than a fresh pack of camel blues.
26. i have never once doubted that
27. your love for me is true,
28. and every day you make me see
29. the rest of my life.

i am a vessel of unreturned love.
i am leaking.
a crack in the bottom,
i drip out more than i fill.

unnamed faces floating through my bed,
and my car,
and unnamed homes.

attempting to fix my broken stature
by sealing the cracks with clay,
solid in the moment,
but nothing more than temporary.

only you can weld the hole.
only you hold the tools.
i hope you can pass the torch.