she was heaving, as if a pair of invisible hands with claws had ripped out her breath completely.
her eyes were dead stars with pointed ends and i wondered what it would be like to be completely submerged in death's robed arms.
the dawn created a halo above her bowed head, and before the final bout of air escaped her lungs, she put her fingers against each other in prayer, and i screamed when she died because i didn't believe in a
heaven.

his lips tasted of nicotine
and his breath incapacitated
the network of neurons that strung
themselves together in my body.
i wanted nothing more than
for him to push me further into
adolescent infatuation.

there was something about
midnight that made my adrenaline raise
to half its usual condescending levels,
something that made me feel like
little earthworms were crawling underneath my wrists,
and they made me think of him when i tossed and turned at night,
when one star flickered i thought maybe he was
winking, maybe he was still
there,
somewhere.

(mischievous) sin; throw your collapsed arms around my body,
you make me so, so, selfishly weak.
shape shift into my throbbing and elastic skin, perpetually suffocate me with your breath;
promise you won't resurrect alone.
pale flesh:
you're in bloom. your old petals have grown in disarray, crooked teeth bear a smile of reluctance.
dust has collected like the last spring on earth,
*there's nothing anyone can do but mourn for you when you're dead.

he had pastel cheeks and thin bones the
color of serotonin,

and

his hands had white callouses that bled
while he slept,
and sometimes when he awoke his lips
whispered of the hushed fluorescent
moon.

when he spoke his voice was as distilled
as a calm ocean tide,
and i wanted to be one of those swimmers to
drown myself in his tremendous
depths.

an arm moved under the kitchen sink,
presumably death;
they had been expecting it for quite some time now.
husbands and their wives had taken a bath the night before-
they closed their eyes and they felt for once;
beautiful striped tigers roaming not on land but
in cages with melting steel bars.

he looked at me and for a second i saw stars fall. i was no longer submerged in gravity's thick blanket, i was wrapped in his iris and pulled into the arms of his eye sockets.
i thought i must be an astronaut, since this was a different planet, something i'd always imagined venus or jupiter would be like.
i'm breathing through his lungs and it feels foreign to me, the kind of feeling you get when you step inside someone else's home--
except this one had a soul and a voice that put me to sleep even when i was so restless i felt i had the moon hanging on my shoulders.
so, with that, i crawled inside his bloodstream and shut out the lights, his voice barely audible when he told me he could no longer feel me pushing him away.

lake michigan, 1987, 6:50pm
she traces the lining of the lake, fingertips diving in first,
then, little by little,
her bare skin touches the water,
a kimono of
moonlit droplets cascading down her back
as her body disappears into the
water.

he didn't notice the small bumps and freckles she
had,
in fact, he covered his eyes when she offered him
her body, and by then i knew she was a
******* lunatic for loving someone
who wasn't
me.

the phone was buzzing on its wall at
9 am,
and she lifted herself out of bed, feet dragging
on the cracks of the wooden floor
of my grandmother's house in her lace
nightgown.
her pulse must've felt to her like it
was twisting out of her skin.

"i want to feel your heart in my hands,
your soul gliding through my fingertips."
his voice was an ocean wave crawling over her ears,
subtle tides of holy water washing her ***** palms clean.

"who is it?" my voice trembled from
across the hallway.
i wanted to punch myself and then,
him.
"stephen. i think he still cares
about
me."

the next year they were to be
married.

palm beach, 2015, 6:51pm
the wood of the rocking chair reminded me
of my grandmother's house, then,
ultimately, her.
now my throat is bone dry.
i pour some whiskey,
and feel my
love
slip further
away.

shrouded by the freckles on her cheek,
i watched the shadows of the settling day fall over her
skin and i forgot what it meant to dream,
for she was the epitome of an easy saturday morning that you never
wanted to wake up from,
she was in my blood and she was a spaceship that would never take off.
i screamed for her to take me away,
abduct me, make me one of your species,
make me love you even deeper than is possible for a human being.

she tethered me to her with her restless spirit;
i wanted to keep believing in her for an unsettlingly enormous infinity,
i wanted to lay by her side and chase the shadows on her back for as long as i could remember.

opening her lips, she burned an image in my mind of her, and i shoved it down my throat and into my heart,
burying her in my soul with dirt under my fingernails,
with blood crusted in my eyes.

my mother used to tell me that the rain was for the lonely,
and that the ocean waves were where virginia woolf drowned her misery with rocks in her pockets.
as a little kid i didn't think to wonder how it could be possible
to be so immensely sad,
and then i met someone who taught me about the different
colors of the sunlight,
someone who loved those same miserable waves
that i hated so
much.

you'll feel like he's staring into all the deep crevices on
your skin, all of the deepest intrusions that make you trust him,
but he's just looking at the purple bruise on your arm,
   something the cat dragged in, he'll say.
you'll laugh but that all-white teeth-showing is laced with
    something buried deeper than any self-dug grave.

most of the time when he's near, you'll feel like some kind
of fresh meat, trouble is, you don't realize he's this beautiful
  white tiger with black stripes and blue eyes,
    and while he looks at you, you don't wonder about how he'll
eat you up and spit you back out again.

heaven knows how much women like the broken boys,
and let me tell you, they're all the same,
  your therapist will tell you, putting out her cigarette and smoke dangling
     from her lips.

the trunks of the trees were weeping and
he was telling me something about how
my parents must be thieves because they put
the stars in my eyes
and i gawked at him and the wind bravely rummaged through
my hair,
searching for a lost heart that was never
there.