My soul is dry and barren
like two chapped lips cracked
in the dead of winter
Barely parting to release a haunted breath
that looks like death's whisper
Bleeding like two perfectly vertically slit
wrists
The kind of thing you cannot save
The kind of thing you have no intention of
taking back
The only tears that fall are from the sky
From God's eyes
Watching his perfect child wander
in such discontent
Without a ripcord to help her disconnect.

Face like a road map. Pock marks like valleys and the little blue vein by your nose like a river rampantly running down through the mountain of your defined cheek bone. Face like a night sky. Freckles like one million diamonds flecked across a porcelain night sky. Two crystal clear blue eyes like full moons reflecting on an untouched lake in the middle of July. Face like a razor blade. The edges of your jaw line so straight and sharp and defined they cut through the flesh with the pointed tip of your chin. Cutting the pads of women's fingers as they trace the delicate lines leaving faint pink traces of their D-N-A. Face like a Brillo pad.  Face like a baby bear cub. Fuzzy and innocent in its nature to be nurtured in the way of the world. Like the framed moment of a woolly caterpillar being cradled by a toddler in the backyard on a fall afternoon in a pile of leaves freshly raked. Face like an anatomically correct hear. That ruptures and burst with each glance at beauty only to reanimate itself for the very idea of said beauty being some sort of purity. Some sort of saving grace. Re-iginiting in crater of eye sockets like coals that become diamonds under the pressure to cry. Face. Face like hands that hold mine firmly. Face. Like. F-A-C-E. Face like my person.


*Prompt from poem by Dorianne Laux

We throw them around
sling them at each other like two children throwing mud
We build temples and tombs worthy of Gods
using them as stanchions
We bleed hues of blues and blacks
finger painting in the puddles

Now when we need them most
they are gone
veins run dry
architecture rots and crumbles
and we are left
with each other

Now her hands are empty
not a ring or a bracelet
bare as God made them
and I wonder
really, I thought that was so cute
Queenie blushes
just a brush of sunburn
it's a real **** affair
This struck me as funny
that makes no difference
with a big summer colony out on the Point
women mapping their legs
I began to feel sorry for them
they couldn't help it

It's a curse word
the way your eyes glint in the moonlight
It's a sin the way my mouth moves
begging to mimic the movements your lips make
Looking like lush petals
as tender as biting into a perfectly ripe peach
I am an animal in your presence
disguised as a young lady in a red sundress
trying to maintain my composure
but my cheeks are flush and you wink at me knowingly
I bite down on my bottom lip until I draw blood
pretending it belongs to you

You are the jagged pill I dry swallow
A time released capsule of miniature razor blades
cutting my throat ever so intricately
Like a surgeon with shaking hands  
arrogantly carving your name in my vocal folds
so every weezing breath I breathe makes your sound

You are the Rorschach patterns on my skin
the blackest blues and deepest purples
from the night you forced yourself in
telling me you loved me
that this is how love begins
My body a canvas for the darkest hues
and my white sheets a delicate masterpiece
for your intricate artistry

You are the shards of shattered glass
fallen from the mirror now faced
with one thousand mosaic reflections
of a face I couldn't tell you belonging to whom
Maybe you know her?
They're wedged in my knuckles
as the light reflects off of them
making my hands look like diamonds
as close to perfection as I've ever come
to seeing reflected in any part of me

You are the burning end of a Marlboro Red
a bad habit I took up because you won't leave my head
Thoughts of you pour through me daily like hot lead

You are the last midnight
You are the last cold sweat
You are the last nightmare
You are my last regret
You are dead