Continue to act within these walls, infinite in time as we console ourselves
Pack up the sun and dismantle the moon
The clouds are a cold, thick gauze above all of us and our misplaced empathy
And my tears are a continuation of the sky and the rain,
The only affluence in this barren decadence.
I stand upon the quay, see the fish swimming as if they are free—
Only ten feet away.

i am still thinking about how i live by a cemetery without a fence
and a sign advertising cremation
you said you’re not sure what to think of that
but this is how you know me,
this is how i let myself be known
starved and dying and silhouetted
against something i don’t own
like the sky or the trees or my gravestone

i think you should know that i love you, or used to love you, or will love you
i think you should know about the incisions
three over your heart and around it
like erosions of faith

i will fold into you, become a bullet
this is a way of being close to you
and i hate to admit i think i am hurting you
imagining your fingers curved over my collarbone like you’re afraid you’ll break me
because i know how that looks when i have a knife gripped in my hand

i am still thinking about the way our hands slotted together
like days of the week,
normalcy perspiring in the air behind us
because we were getting used to feeling somewhat alive
i am still thinking about the short hand of the clock
digging into my ribcage harder than your fingernails ever could
and i’m sorry
i swear i’m sorry
i am kicking and yelling and throwing sand in your eyes
despite the fact that i know you love me
and i am still thinking about the normal length of a pause
when you’re telling someone you love them, too

i think you should know that i love you, or used to love you, or will love you
[pause]
i love you too
[pause]

i hate to admit i think i am hurting you
i love you too
i hate to admit i think i am hurting you
i love you too
i love you too
i love you too
i love you too
i love you too

if i died, my left hand over my heart keeping the bandages in place
while i lost consciousness
if i died and you had my journals
i know you’d read them and
i would fold into you, become a bullet
a way of you being close to me

i am still thinking about how i live by a cemetery without a fence
our hands interlocked
how can we tell that we are outside the cemetery
if it has no fence?

days of the week degrading freely

i am hurting you, i hate to admit
i think i am hurting you

[pause]

i ran barefoot through her torso
now i am buttoning up her sides with silver thread
as she screams and kicks and breaks her wrists on my back
painting a mural in red;
“sweetheart, this is how you look best”
i don’t want her to hurt like this and i don’t want her to stop needing me
so i just sit and listen, criss-cross stitches
i am her seamstress

i heard, once, that vampires are vengeful angels
i don’t think i still believe that, i don’t think
i ever really believed that
but i don’t know what to believe
when she tells me
she loves me and she wants me here
i wonder how long i’ve been faithless,
fantasizing about burning witches
sitting cold and hungry as i sharpen my spear

i don’t have the heart to tell her the truth
tracing her fingers over my wrist, searching for a pulse
if only we could stay like this forever

we hold too many dreams for our bodies—
she knows how much it’s hurting me
she reads aloud eulogies
for the poisoned paint that i’m still inhaling the fumes of
and she tells me she thinks that shade of blue is pretty
i sit and listen; i must keep her seams from splitting

and she kisses my fingertips and hisses holy words
into the spaces between them
reciting something i don’t recognize; but it’s nice
she is mismatched cupboards
and drafty windows, and uneven floors
she is unlike any comfort i’ve ever known before

You said you wanted to jump
Off the porch
Instead you sat out there and smoked

You asked me to braid your hair but
I didn’t know how to,
You bedazzled the TV remote with red rhinestones

I listened to you rap in Spanish
I let you make me ramen–
Our shared comfort food

I didn’t know how to reply when
You called me beautiful
I wrote poetry in the dark
So the light wouldn’t wake you
I stayed in our room
Because the door would have creaked
If I left
And I didn’t want to startle you
We’d just been watching horror movies
Plus I knew you needed some rest
You were tired/hungry/cold from living on the streets
Yet somehow you had the energy
To bother taking care of me

And I wanted to do the same for you