i miss your growing ribcage
pressed against my back.

i miss drowning in your eyes.

i miss your aching presence
knitted into my bones

and i miss your fingers on my skin.

you were my glass half empty, but i could always make it full.

i miss our slow coffee mornings
when we couldn’t separate
our intertwined fingers.

i miss skipping class just to be with one another.

i miss your platinum tones.

you are pine trees (resilient)
you are headlights (warm)
you are dasies (vibrant)

you are home.

lagoon eyes.
beat the drum.

feathertip fingers.
beat the drum.

echoing ribcage.
beat the drum.

dance with me.

i love you.
2. that scares me.
3. more than the apocalypse.
4. or student loans.
5. i think you love me too.
6. which scares me even more, because
7. for the first time in my life,
8. we both have the same amount of kindling in our campfire chests.
9. i want to help you clean, because
10. your apartment is a pig sty.
11. but i wouldn't want to do household chores with anybody else,
12. and i know you're trying.
13. we both are.
14. trust me,
15. i know the feeling of cemented lungs,
16. too heavy to lift yourself out of bed,
17. but i sit up.
18. you have strengthened my back.
19. i hope i have strengthened yours.
20. i love your hawaiian dad shirts.
21. i think they're endearing.
22. i want to be next to you, always, and
23. even *** doesn't feel close enough.
24. if you were a haunted house,
25. i'd be the ghost that never leaves.
26. the homeowners would pull out the sage
27. but i love the smell.
28. i'd be a kind ghost.
29. i'd do the dishes.
30. as long as i can remain in your eaves.

hold me more closely
leaves sprouting from your vine limbs
I am your rock wall
cling to my jagged outline
I water your flowering heart
clean, direct from the tap
nestled in your terracotta ribcage
my toes are shrouded in mulch
I am the night
but you bloom in the moonlight
you bask in the light of my eyes
as much as they are hidden in the fog
your roots have twisted into my soil
and we live in eternal spring
symbiotic photosynthesis

She is sunsets and Her laugh is waves
crashing on the beaches you bake your skin on
you layer the sunscreen and tell yourself that She is worth the sunburn.

Her eyes are embers and they smolder, smolder, smolder
there is a hole in your jugular that She has burned right through
She is beauty (roses, blankets, eating food with Her hands),
She is light (candles, thumb­lit match sticks, teeth: carved marble).

She is love.
you can feel Her in your chest
and Her temple worships
that God is a gender-neutral term.
you water the apple tree in her chest,
blooming,
but fruitless.

this time,
only adam
feasting
from her tree of temptation.