i still think about you a lot.
and i don't know if that's weakness.
you're in the cigarettes i smoke
(when you handed me one after another and told me not to smoke so much)
you're in my car
(where we put the windows down and you flooded your body with medicine)
you're in my mind, and even after everything
(my hands shaking on the wheel)
you're there
(telling me how cute i was from my passenger seat)
i can barely remember your mouth or the way it felt
('this **** is fire')
and i know you were a cancer, preying on my softest parts,
(you swaying, eyes half-closed, caught in center of that 'fire')
but i can't **** that cancer i can't
(your arms around me through your haze)
because then i'd have to **** all of it
('thanks kiddo')
even the good parts.

There's a somebody for everybody,
but I think my somebody
fell into a well and lives there
like folklore.
I think my somebody is somewhere
far away, not missing me
like I am missing them.
I think my somebody
might already be married
with two kids and a mortgage,
or entrapped in the idea of someone else.
I think my somebody lives somewhere
with dirt floors and no telephone,
and can't write to me
or even keep warm.
I think my somebody is lonely like me,
sitting and thinking
and shrinking away from a world half-empty,
while I'm here
and you're there.

i think a lot about my ribs
and about my stomach
and my organs
and how they would look if
someone pulled them out
i think a lot about my skin
and the way it's whittled
over me.
i think a lot about my mind
and
how the next smoke will calm it
to a dull hum.
i think a lot about my weight
and my mind is heavy with
the thought.

i think about my bed and my sheets
and how they might've once
been occupied by
more than just me.
but now it's so lonely,
lonely, lonely,
like my mind, my ribcage, my weight,
my organs persisting through the poisons
i put in them.

i think too much
and i want,
want, want
too much to say.
i don't know how i got the
privilege of this prolonged
purposeless
sadness.

if i just got out
out, out
of bed and fought for once.

but it's hard when you wake up
drunk, drunk, drunk.

i like to feel my stomach,
where it's soft and then turns
into the hardness of my ribs.
i like the contrast, the
feeling of it underneath my hand.
i don't know why
but i like my contrasts
and the way that sometimes
i feel so low
and other times like i'm
ten feet above the ground.
i like that i can laugh
and then lie in bed at night,
feeling the loneliness settle on top of me
as an extra sheet that fails to keep me warm.
i like that the wild, contradicting variation
like New England weather, like a prediction
versus a storm.
i like knowing that i can feel everything,
all the violence of myself.
i like hurting because it means i'm real,
and happiness for the same reason.
i like my contrasts.

I want to make my body like fall
so that when I'm dying you'll think
I'm beautiful.
And why I'm crying you'll see
orange, red, and yellow
and the litter will cover every imperfection.
I want to be every cliche
wrapped in scarves and leather laced up tight.
I want to be your frozen dawn
and early night.

I want to be warm in your hands
like a mug.
I want you to understand
that I'm seasonal, I can only be so much
for so long.

i know no one is here
looking at my poetry.
but i like having it,
so it can remind me.

Stop looking at me
stop stop stop stop.
Their narrow eyes make me want to throw up
and I feel
so sick
welling in me like some ******* typhoon
and I don't know what do with this
energy gathering force, black and huge.
I don't know where to direct this
animal that grew in the cage
of the boxes
that they've tried
to cram the lid on top of
with me there silent.

I am more than ***, weight, gender, hair
and not that any of you care,
but I can feel and I'm alive
and my heart is banging against my chest
but nobody's home,
nobody's home.
And you might as well take a knife
and find a place for it between the sturdiness of my ribs.
Maybe you can cut out
some of my less desirable traits.
Maybe you can trim me into shape.

They look at me like a murderer.
Maybe you're afraid I'll stain your cornflower hair red
with my ***** touch.
And the more you
look look look
at me
the more I think
I'd like to very much.

So look at me
like I'm ****** and ******
and sin.
Alright,
okay,
you win.
I'll be the murderer,
the outsider, the stranger you'll never be.
And I'll ******,
god, I'll do it.
I'll ****** me.

I spent the spare change of my life telling myself,
'I don't need anyone.'
And I think that I was right.
I told myself,
'Don't depend on anyone.'
Because people are as vaporous as clouds,
and I know that I was right.

And now I think,
'I don't need anyone,
but
wouldn't it be nice
to want someone.'

i don't understand
my impulses.
i don't understand the sun
or the moon,
or the veined leaves splayed
orange, green, and gold.
i don't understand
why i feel so
old
or why i make myself
so sad.
i don't understand
why i was born,
how things got so bad.
and mostly
i don't understand
what a ******* difference it makes.

the internet told me it was either
mono
or
depression
so i shrugged and thought
it must be mono.
the sleeping too much,
or not at all,
eating one small meal a day
and barely keeping it down.
i'm hungry
and everything smells
like sickness.

the cigarettes are going one by one,
and my room is stuffy
and feverish.
i listen to the music
pulsate from next-door,
thrumming near my ear and mingling
with voices and laughs and little jokes
i'll never know.

i put my ear to the wall to listen,
but i know i'll
just be there
straining to hear.

it's go to be mono.
must be,
has to be,
because i'd feel betrayed
by my own brain chemistry

i'm not that person;
i'm not that person.

i'm
feeling so much
like an object
i'm becoming
inanimate.

the flow of information
so vast
it might swallow us up
a great flood of
pictures, pictures, pictures
and
people, people, people.
i don't know
how it's possible
for a grain of sand
to be alone on a beach
or a water molecule in a sea.
but sometimes it seems
like
the middle of
the torrent
is the
quietest place to be.

I wish I could warn my past,

                      I wish I could send a smoke signal
                                         or a telegram.
                      or a letter.
                                                         ­      Just to say,
                                                            ­  BE CAREFUL
you may become,

                                 so accidentally,

                                                  ­                                                                 ­  an ugly person
                                                                ­                                                     one day.
                                                            ­                                                                 ­            Love,
                                                           ­                                                                 ­             K

there are two
selves
fighting within me.
one wants
nothing but the
gratification
of anger, destruction
and on and on and on.
the other is so desperate to be liked,
needed, desired
and on and on and on.

i'm a run on sentence dwindling down
into a person
so small and petty
i mean nothing
despite all i have to say.
and what do i have to say anyway
aside from bitterness,
pity, anger
and on and on and on.

i'm trying to learn how to
breathe again
and how to exorcise the
chemicals.
i'm trying to bite back
all the things
that i do wrong.
i'm trying to fit in and to not be
an angry soul
with nothing but a shoulder cracked clean in two.
i'm trying,
breathing, exhaling, slowly disappearing
and on and on and on.

love is saying
you won't get drunk on them tonight
you want to stay sober
coherent
together
but you
just
can't
help yourself

i thought i liked to ****
rough, *****, ******.
but i'm only ever
sad
after.
i'm only ever
wishing that they didn't
leave me
laying there
like a used vessel
that has merely
served its purpose.

i thought i liked to be
empty
but i'm only ever
wanting for someone to come
pour their heart out to me
so that i might
carry a little
something of them.

i thought a lot of things
and now i
can only think of
how incredibly
quiet it is inside my ribcage

i feel like i'm swimming
in a petri dish.
and some gloved hand
has dropped in a dose
of self-loathing
and i'm dissolving,
dissolving,
dissolving
molecule by molecule.

why have you given me this poison?

I thought I tasted
something unique in your mouth.
It was clean and simple and
you smiled as our mouths
went in and out
like the tide.

I had a night that turned to day,
light touching the bedspread through the narrow window
and crawling up to where our heads lay.

And after months
of eclipse
you struck suddenly like a match
flickering into being.

I held you for a night,
but a match smolders
till it touches your fingers,
and mine are singed.

i always thought poetry
happened as life
chaffed you over
and over
until it rubbed holes in
the fiber of you
and almost without even knowing it
you leaked your soul in lines.
i thought experience was beautiful
but its only disenchanting.

i think a cynic is such an ugly thing
and i think myself the ugliest of all.
i'm always wanting
always falling into a trope of misery;
i thought i was better than that,
i thought i was wise.
i can't hide my sensitivity or shiny pinpricks of hurt
catching the light.
i thought poetry dripped like faucet water
like a garden hose.
i suppose i've learned that poetry
is like pulling your worst fears
from your stomach where they thrive in acid dark,
and pushing them out through your mouth.

it's word-poisoning.
it's the ugliest parts,
it's vestigial tenderness
and i'm bruised
yellow black blue
purple red.
i've been living in the
tortured safety of my own head
and poetry is my writing on the wall
scratched into the sides of my skull.
it doesn't matter what i say
because i'll probably
live there till i die
but at least i'll have this graffiti,
this watery poetry sloshing like
brine in a jar.
what an ugly cynic i've become.

whatever you are
is whatever you see.
whatever is your pleasure
your ecstasy
in this whatever generation.

it's equal parts beauty and degradation
driving this sulking generation
to the consummation of image, of physical perfection.
our bodies are up for approval and thorough inspection.

whatever chemicals work the best
whatever gets you drunkest.
whatever gets you hot, hard,
don't forget
to live life to the fullest
but only if you're worthy,
only if you've passed the test.

if only you could rise up from your room
or start a revolution through the phone
plug in, go quiet and
surrounded
you are alone.

this is our whatever generation,
**** your thought and your soul
and your hope:
that is the initiation.
blame society
and forget,
that it is our creation.
so join the fold and strive to reach
that spiritual elevation
of a perfect smile, body, hair
because variation
is god's greatest failure.

this is my whatever generation,
the caste system of beauty
where screens light the path to liberation.
all sins are forgiven,
save ugliness,
that is our only stipulation.
so do whatever, feel whatever,
and whatever can be yours.
aren't you lucky to live
in a generations like ours?

I feel stagnant on the shoreline
watching them adrift on a yacht,
a speck of white against grey and stale blue.
There’s salt in my mouth and
hate on my tongue
and I just want to build up a sandcastle and kick
it over and stomp upon it because I don’t
know what else to do except be childish
and alone
and lay upon the shoreline,
watching the phantasmagoria of lights play and shadowed silhouettes twist in social dance,
until the tide comes in and binds my mouth
with seaweed and my thoughts with tentacles so I can
suffocate my anger because I hate it
swimming here inside my saturated mind.
I want to drag you out like undertow and fill your orifices with foam and
and sea-stones rubbed smooth by years of your rough push and pull.
I’ve balanced my life in the palm of my hand,
but now I want to scissor it from my body because it’s so full of
nothing.

I write on that binder
where you crushed
those two blue constellations
into stardust,
and I watched you pull heaven
into your skull.
I hope for a moment,
you were full
but you seem so empty now.

I guess your
blue supernova
turned to ash.
I guess your past
is orbiting you
as you burn out
against black.

I feel like I'm watching from Earth,
your implosion,
which has already been
and I can only
bathe in the
light
of those two blue constellations
hidden by your eyelashes.

all my poems
have become people.
i've tried the imagery, the
rhyme, the stanza,
the verse.
but i think i'm cursed.

sometimes it's him,
or her,
or them.
sometimes when i start
a line
it twists into a familiar shape
and the poem is a polaroid
slowly appearing.

i've collected people
and things
and ideas
and they all weave together
like a novel.
more and more these poems
seem like snapshots,
or a failed attempt
to capture
all the little things that make
him, her, them
beautiful and real.

maybe i'm on a quest to feel
or on a journey of commemoration,
but the people i've let in
have stolen my pen,
my poem,
my heart,
without an invitation.

You've made your world
of eggshells
and we're all just trying
to walk in it.

What I love the most about you
is my name on your tongue,
through your teeth.
There's meaning in it,
and in me;
you make those five letters
sound like poetry.

There is a time
between the appropriate hour for sleeping
and complete abandon
an hour or two between respectability
and three cups of coffee.

I'm watching the minutes
flicker in the bottom right corner of my screen
there is a hazy sort of
beauty in this in-between,
where my eyelids
heavy and dark
pull taut and wide
my house is so quiet I'm afraid
to breathe or even
type,
hunched over the keys
in translucent
artificial light.

The hour
or two,
is passing from me and winking like a star on its path
to nowhere.
It occurs to me
that I should sleep,
that I'll be tired for work,
that my head aches from
the electronic glow.
But still I sit and wait for some revelation
in the half reality
of this in-between.

But it's late,
it's past,
and now I have to go.

All at once
this pain of being
bore down on me,
like a tidal of feeling
and sat curled upon my chest
like a knowing,
smug
cat.

I think I am transformed,
changed,
estranged from the cold humor
that kept me still.
But I'm filled with fear
for everyone I've ever known.
I see them sinking, drowning
and alone.
And here I am on the shore,
wishing there was more
I could do to drag them
from the crushing
depths of their demons.

Sometimes I'm so lost in people
I forget I can hurt
and  
this pain of being
comes from seeing
the world as it is.
From seeing people as they are
and loving them,
reaching,
even if they're too far out to sea,
too lost to pain,
too twisted to ever change.

I think it's trash
that society makes me feel like a *****
for getting angry,
for being brash.

I think it's sick
that I'm ****** for saying
words like
***** and ****.

I think it's a waste
that I'm looked down on
for saying jokes
in bad taste.

I think it's insane
that I'm considered
too fat, too ugly, too masculine,
and am forced to feel shame.

I think it's a tragedy
that as a woman I have to
undo and unlearn
me.

There is a poetic irony
in being a victim.
It's an art, a skill
honed by abuse.
And the victim learns to be
one of two things.
The victimized, the oppressed,
or
the abuser, the user.

You practice
a higher art.
You can be
both.

It's amazing
how people
love the things
that
hurt them.

You can be my ball of wax.
I'll roll you between my fingertips
until you're warmed and soft
and I can mold you.
Some are impressionists
or modernists
but I wanted to be a
realist.
So I made you in the image
of my reality.
Only I made you
taller,
kinder,
handsomer,
sweeter.
I shaped you
with so much
self-deception
and so much
failed perception.

You can be my boy of wax.
I made you in the winter
and you were strong
and solid
for a time.
But the summer came and you grew
smaller,
shorter,
quieter,
farther,
and you,
my artful manipulation
of
what I so
wanted
to create,
melted.

You can be my pool of wax,
a shapeless
well
of malformed memories
that change
with every touch.
I curl my knees to
my chest and
do my best to stop
prying and prodding you,
my pool of wax.
Because with every touch
it burns
my skin and turns
my fingers
an angry red.

I made you,
and I never
knew
that
a boy of wax
could unmake
me.

Grasping greedy claws for brilliance
nicotine, alcohol, smoke
trying to choke out brilliance
through these substances
variegated like a jangling ring of keys
to an enlightened door.
But the more I try to **** down
each little chemical, I feel
emptier, drained
and my strained imagination
leans on reality for support.

And I tell  myself that there is always time,
another tomorrow like a promise
or an I.O.U.
and that shining tomorrow will be
so effortlessly new
drenched in drugs
and sweat
and nostalgia
and I'll be present
and there
and full,
pulling on the sleeve of the almost known,
the call that could reach my phone.

And tomorrow I'll be thin
and weight as much as
smoke.
Tomorrow all those lies I spoke
will be true, and my selfish wants
will no longer be daunted by
my crippling doubt.
Tomorrow will be without error or pain
or disappointment, or that same monotony.
Tomorrow, that cool spring morning, will renew
Trust me, and forget the truth.

I want to be as light as vaporous smoke
     Maybe then
        I could surround you,
              float wordlessly to you,
                  and fill you.
         You couldn't catch me, sliding
            between the lines of your hand.
                 But I think that
                  you would only grasp more.
I will be as light as mist,
   as fog,
   as blissful nothingness.
       Try and catch me with jars,
           but I will be everywhere
           and I will be everything.


I will never be as light as gas.
Gravity puts his foot down
and you pass around my
solid form.
And I look so longingly
at the clouds spinning in a storm.
Maybe I could be a cloud,
high overhead and drench you
or even
strike you dead.

My bones are filled like licorice
and my brain is marshmallow
under heat.
You're eating away at me.

You shake off little scraps of self
that I follow, grasp with two hands.
You leave enough to make me wonder,
but not enough to understand.

And from my sugary lips,
a thousand sweet requests,
trying to drown the bitterness
and keep the sour repressed.

But you're coating my skin,
dulcet and sickly and heavy
and all that's left of my sweet intent
are the bugs nibbling at me.

these are the moments
        it's said. the quiet
the grass, the dirt, beneath
      me.
       the breeze a touch cold
these are the seconds the
  transient frame-by-frame
               animations slowed
a thousand fold.
       Everyone is connected
    I swear life is a game  
             of limbo of
              cat's cradle. I swear
                       these are the
            pauses
               the breaks the
                 breaths in between.
                          all the chains:
                 these chords, these connections, these links
        curled around our ankles.
                   I swear.
                  these are the moments
                       i'm alone.

sleep that is not really sleep but half-lidded existence
and again, indifference that tightens
like summer clothes on a winter body.

pillowed flesh that never cares and
a greasy face who stares dully at
its twin who is a stranger.

angry, angry for a moment and
tears, rips, sobs
then desolate, desolate for a moment and

sleeps, sleeps, sleeps.

sliding into a hollow place where it is dry
and the rain is outside and it trickles to that
solitary holding cell where pliant curves are a thousand miles away.

desperate, desperate for a moment and
whisper, utter, scream
then lonely for a moment

nothing, nothing, nothing

I am convinced
    that when I was young,
         I nearly died.
I very nearly did.

And my soul,
   cast from my body,
was gone.
      My radiant, lovely form
          composed of collar bones and smooth hair;
I've lost it.

I have scoured all day
    and prowled by night,
searching for my beautiful bones.

Instead I have fallen
   into this body. This flesh knotted around me.
It is foreign, rough,
  and I hate it. I hate it.
      Where is my true self?

When I am keener, when I am stronger,
when I am faster, fitter, better,
   I will find my lost limbs and
       forgotten features. I will transcend this mediocrity
which is two sizes too small.

This is not me,
   this body bought on sale.
  
I'm afraid to feel otherwise.

Every moment blurs into a bend
of semi-reality, a question of
recollection. A thread fraying at the ends.
My heart pounds in a flurry,
and I'm in a frantic hurry
to dream my life a way and whisper nothings--
not even sweet--
and to disappear as soon as we meet
inside myself and inside a heart of amber,
in nectarine stagnation
of my own creation, balancing on the thick cable of separation
between thoughts and action, too afraid to fall into either.

Not a wallflower, but a wall indeed
caught in the mire of my own selfish loneliness.
Can you see me there? With my eyes in kind forgetfulness
and my hair cut short to show my face,
but finding it an empty place which is a cardboard front to my sagging edifice.
Oh god, I'm so afraid of being dull,
yet the harder I push, the more I pull.

I feel like I am a glacier on the run,
forced to move, afraid of the sun.
My bed is as cold, a glacial sheet
and I draw it up to my chin.
Within my head there's a circus of love,
clowns with painted faces and mirrors ten feet high.
And sometimes when I'm alone I cry and point my finger in my chest.
Always knowing why feel alone.

Is it possible to doubt yourself as much as I?
I kissed a girl once and felt blank
and I wondered why, and when
I found I sank to my knees and prayed
to my atheist god.
I am so ashamed, and with every rising sun my heart sinks in turn.
Why do my thoughts think and my courage fail
on the brink of something deep and terrifying?

These thoughts creep up on me in the night:
seethe from my skin and lay limp upon the street.
I'll play my music loud so they can't compete.

I wonder too often if I've lived my life all wrong.
Sometimes I'm lost, sometimes I play along.
I've burned myself and I itch at my knotted brand,
wishing I could change it at a command.
     Too simple, too stupid to wish scars away.
What would they say? That thought paralyzes me, keeps me static and in ice.

What is the price for the sin of lying to oneself?
And where do I begin?

The only thing I've ever committed to
has been cigarettes.
So I've been stockpiling my doubts
and all my little regrets.
Maybe I'm useless, maybe I'm a waste.
Or maybe I just haven't found it;
maybe I haven't found it yet.

And the taste of smoke is jolting, renewing,
reminding
me of that fear that I
am designing my life around:
desperate to find color in the insipid motions of living.
Maybe I am committed to the search;
That one day I will wake up and be found
And the first thing I reach for in the morning
will not be the lighter but
her
or him
and their pluming breath, rhythmic will surround me
and the warnings
on the side of my pack will seem real
and my god, will I finally ******* feel.

Do you remember me?
I'm sure you do but do you
see through the blown glass
warped blue-green?

You must remember me
I tell myself as I stroke
the puckered corners of my page.
At least some shred of me
is lodged in your shrapnel heart.

You don't remember me
as you walk past in booted stride;
you have gone south for the winter,
I hibernate and hide.

Around my bulging linen waist,
my knees upon the tile,
my cotton chest, my very best,
stained and smudged with bile.

My mouth, my chapstick lips are smeared,
my knuckles painted white.
I run the sink, I fear to think
and cleave to shrouding night.

My throat remembers its baptism,
flat and sharp my stomach sings.
As I fix my hair, in the mirror I stare,
a wistful smile of secretive things.

Sense comes at the most senseless times and
wonder comes when the world is dull.
Neurotic, I stumble into the calm
and sunlight unfolds in the throes of depression.

My life is an ill-timed spectacle; my big top is freshly painted and moth-eaten.

Come one, come all to see my brilliant downfall
at my own hands. Can one girl have devised so masterful
an undermining? I think not, patrons young and old.

I am listless when it counts the most
and engrossed in the extraneous.
Trust me, I'm a master of these believings and disbelievings.

I can tame tigers and yet the pests undo me.
Beetle-brained, I guess you could say.
There I go again.

Undoing and redoing, rethinking, unthinking and linking all these meaningless experiences in a chain of being that takes the guise of sense but bends into a pattern without purpose and a gobbledygook message spelling out the things I've already read a thousand times but can't seem to memorize.
My brain is a storm of confession and repression and a sense of self that is in fact the lack of.
Does any of this make sense to you? This absurd gestation between bright and blue?
And all the nonsense in between that braids the random with the fated?
Now you're probably irritated at my own madness; darling, you're not the first that has cursed me.
Nor will you be the last. I've heard this lecture; I've taken this class.
It's the one that tells you everything is sense
and there's a great symbol
and when you die you'll receive recompense for all those little goods you did.
Aesop promised, didn't he?
Well grow up, because there is nothing beyond for me.
And I'll die knowing that at least I could see how ridiculous we humans can be,
searching to name the stars and the rocks beneath our feet.
It doesn't matter; perhaps you're better off naming the worms that will soon eat
both you and me.
Life is does not fit in some neat box of god and good and bad and right.
In fact, the only thing that is sure is the day and the night and ultimately
the loss of our fight for the eternal and the immortal.
No one will read this, the writings of some girl who curls inside herself when the world comes knocking.
There is nothing that will not rot
and we ought not try to fight that.
The pearly gates are the crumbling stones in your backyard;
god is yourself and I know this may be hard for you to realize
but stop clinging to these comforting lies because
I'm not a fated poet, and I'm not meant for words
we just happened to meet one day
and realize we both were a little absurd.

I ran a red light today, and god that's so mundane
but I thought some thoughts I think are worthy
of putting on a page.

I saw the car to my left, the slick road glowing red.
I thought, just for a moment, what it might be like to be dead.

I ran a red light today, and god that's so morbid,
I thought that if I died, I'd never
finish something I started.

I felt my lungs twitch and my heart freeze,
signals shooting from my head.
Just what would I be missing, if I was cold and dead?

I ran a red light today, and god it's not that big a deal
but my mind went still and I didn't know
how I should feel.

I still need to lose a few pounds, meet someone new
all those petty things
we people go through.

I ran a red light today, and god I don't know why I care
but I guess it's because I like it here
rather than nowhere.

what has my skin ever done to you?
has it sinned or lied or driven you mad?
it does to me, but to you?

what has my skin ever done to you?
besides existing in this world where the beholder is shot by firing squad and his eye spooned out for all to see, what?

we were wed in the summer some sixteen years ago, my skin and i,
those years of discontent.
i filed all the papers
but i think they got lost in the post.

still i sit here sewed into swatches of white
writing down this question:
what has my skin ever done to you?

We walked on fields of hellish amber,
our bare toes scraping barbed wire.
we held our naked palms out flat
so that they might feel the air thick with dust.
We walked in the black rain, dying our hair a sooty grey
and leaving vertical wrinkles on our cheeks.
We walked towards the end.

We watched the phoenix plumes rise up
then crescendo in an extinguishing fire.
we saw the mountains crumble, as if tired,
and lay in purplish rest.
We saw the shining sea stir against the coasts
and eat back the Earth.
We touched hands,
and we walked towards the end.

We saw a billion mouths demanding, reprimanding,
consuming and presuming, quiet to a hum.
We saw them crumple on driveways and in shopping malls,
murmuring so many names to the same effect.
They were still then,
but we,
we walked towards the end.

We trudged in our clothes,
shreds of some past life
we left there in the ashes.
We walked under the studded sky pierced by skyscrapers,
peeling back as easily as skin.
There, the torn fabric waltzed in a hissing breeze,
burning orange at the bulging seams.
Lopsided stars hung askew as decorations
and cartwheeled to the steady rythmn of gunfire.
Swaying, we danced along,
as we walked towards the end.

Scorched prairie grass crumbled beneath our feet.
Ringing filled us, and we broke cleanly in two.
Asphalt melted and mingled with the crust
and buildings knelt to pray.
We laid down side by side,
brushing our fingertips.
The sky bled lukewarm tears above us.
We knitted our hands together
and unfolded ourselves upon packed dirt,
black and singed,
as angels stitched the lacerated heavens.

We rested, tiny scars on Earth's craggy face.
We nicknamed every star and every worm,
orange with nuclear light.
Laughing, we closed our eyes,
flowing with the fire and the night.
Our hands were sure and firm,
as we drifted out of sight,
fading towards the end.

Inadequacy is heavy. I've never weighed it but I'd imagine
it's at least a ton.
After a while, the back becomes bent and the neck curved
and eyes twisted from the sun.
With love in our hearts,
we pass this on
to our daughter or our son
only to crumple,
exhausted and undone