The words jumped her barbed wire lips and were mangled in the most grotesque and unimaginable way
Escaping restriction to find themselves mangled, left inside out hanging by their own tongues
Off the edge of sanity dripping into forever.
Dipping a toe into the beautiful sorrow that is memory
Tears taste like wine and gin. Words smell like hangovers and violins.
Hearts ache like muscles sore from stretching for so long without use.
And Sundays like porcelain and donuts.

Timid as she was, a mouse holed down six feet in the ground hiding
From the snake he was. From the beast he was.
She found herself a fascinated corpse of desire and anguish.
A man five foot ten. Standing six feet off the ground. Staring at her through the water.
Asking her what. Asking her why. Asking her emptiness.
Look at me. Face me. Do you not know what I want.
He would not wrestle her to the ground she was already a part of, covered in worms and critters.
He would not hold any part of her tenderly, gently, sweetly.
He would only face her and stare into her eyes, barely brushing his lips against hers slowly.
At first slowly, at first timidly. At first almost sweetly.
And then she turned away from the emptiness in his eyes.

The magic inside of him is too powerful for her eyes to witness
Naked and innocent as they are.
There's a way his soul grinds and chafes against thoughts as they lay unprepared
That gets tested by question without answers and people without petitions.
There is no one path.
There is a single door locked fourteen times leading to a narrow, dry valley.
Deeper than the sea, lined with dust and maggots
He once crouched hysterically digging and clawing at the earth
In search of a power to great for a single body of flesh to inhabit.
Comfortably.

An old man knocked on my door and gave me flowers
He said "darling keep these forever" and he walked away.
So I sat and wondered about the death of these flowers I was told to keep forever
And I put them in a vase and slept.
When I awoke I was an old woman with a house made entirely out of roses
With the old man sitting next to me.
"I see you got the roses.
The ones I always meant to give you when I first saw you."
I could see in his eyes that I'd always loved him.
And that we were young.

Black coffee, closed book, no mystery.
She is defined.
A word in the dictionary with one line.
One tense.
One meaning.
She is the word you must look up to understand
But once you do.
You know her.
Like the north star you know her.
Why she shines, where she is.
Why she cries and who she smiles for.
Perhaps one day
Someone will look her up.
And make an honest woman out of her.
But until then she is nothing but black coffee, closed books.
And mystery.

It's 6 pm and I'm drunk off of cheap red wine
Poured to the brim of a plastic glass writing
About how lonely I am.
But I'm not lonely, I have cheap red wine
And every 6 pm for the rest of my life.

For one night they loved the way only strangers know how to love
The way only she knew how to love, a fire in her heart kindled by the softness of his touch.
She refused to love, he refused to love, and yet they were
Twirling in an ever-ending, music-less, whirlwind of tenderness and sweetness.
She called him honey. Panicking. Said he wasn't alone.
He said stop.
She turned over and wept.
He left.
Strangers. The way it was always meant to be, but the way it never should have been.
With a secret.
They loved, the way only young people can love each other.
Never ending and unforgiving love.