And I'm back here
again
at the intersection of foreign language and familiarity
Choking down gum like a four year old memory
And it's not because my head's been somewhere else lately
but because it gets me thinking
about the difference between loosing you and knowing someone else found you
I keep opening umbrellas inside because I can't seem to get away from all this rain
and I've been in the gutter for longer than my father stayed but when the flood water comes it's not gonna be clear it's gonna look like mud
And it reminds me of being waist deep in an unfamiliar body of water,
trying to sell pieces of my old self back to the new one,
like history doesn't repeat itself
and I wonder if you dream of burning family photos and wearing the ashes as perfume too
Like somehow my inner child isn't gonna drown within you,
like somehow this mess will mean something
Like somehow the fire will end and the sky will stop burning

it is not enough to love,
it is never enough. you must sew your fingers shut
like treasure.
mold into paper, heart like memory foam.
you must lock
the doors and change the keys, even if they don't visit. make your first drink in this palace a delight,
mount a bottle to the ceiling - decorate
with pale pink everything.
build a fist fit for windowpanes
and break no glass.
remember that a laughing bird will never fly at night, cranberries won't grow on trees and
his blood cannot stain your teeth.
young girl your are so lucky to sleep,
so lucky to dream and so lucky to love.
but it is not enough to love.
one must also learn to be.

but isn't the real tragedy that I found myself within you
as you briefly gazed into the mirror that is me and walked away
isn't the real tragedy that I have become a vise of borrowed space
a gap to be filled by hands I have reached for in the dark
that I have misplaced my emptiness for loneliness
and in return
lost count of the bodies I have slipped into like old coats
trying to find the one that shapes me into the woman I was before you left
my bones may be empty but my fists are full of the laughter of native ghosts
mocking me for holding onto a love less real than they are
isn't the real tragedy that I can't place the nights I have attempted to answer my question of grief with ***
a wreckage of ash perading as anguish
but isn't that love
not seeing the explosion when you are the bomb
isn't the real tragedy that I am alive purely by luck at this point
that I am nothing more than a decorated shipwreck
*an obituary
my very own ceremony

Someone once told me that life is just a series of moments,
that the past is merely a story we tell ourselves before we fall asleep.
And so I look at him and I am reminded that I am not who I was a moment ago,
and that I shouldn't try to be.
I fear a reality of fiction and distortion,
where my life is a blurry foreign film and he is the fourth wall,
always broken.
I have written of lovers and their seemingly intangible hands for so long that my concept of time is impressionable,
one might even call it sacrilegious.
I have bled dry every metaphor capable of embodiment that I wonder if it ever meant anything,
I wonder if anything ever will.

I want to write him into a scripture of meaning, of something other than illustrated angish.
I want to write about something that isn't love,
that isn't a thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.
I want to write about the way he leads me into rock pools,
like a child being baptized.

I look at him and I am reminded of the ocean,
as if his blood can only move in waves without devotion,
more like instinct.
I want to write about something that isn't love,
because this is more like inspiration.
This is not knowing what could possibly come after his tide falls back.

I am aware that literature always ruins the ending,
that finishing a book mid sentence is the only way to avoid the loss of its final words.
I am aware that beautiful things can never stay,
but maybe that's what makes them beautiful.
He is a picture of my perfect faith,
but he doesn't make me want to believe in religion,
because I know god hates the competition.

For so long I had thought that I was never going to feel anything new,
that I had exceeded the depth of emotions,
like anything that follows can only be a lesser version of something previously felt,
but here I gawk with a mouthful of blasphemous teeth.

I couldn't tell you about the snowstorm he evokes within my chest,
nor the locust plague that raid in his name.
Because this is not a love story,
at least not just yet.
This is a man that has grown roots where I have only planted seeds,
a man that scripts his stories on the soles of his feet.
*And so I look at him,
and I am reminded that I am not who I was a moment ago,
and that I shouldn't try to be.

I tell strangers in fast-food restaurants
that my existence begins and ends
with you,
like my life is some sick joke.
(Two past versions of yourself walk into a bar.)
But they just scoff some rhetoric and say
"are you going down with the ship?"
Like I just woke up from that dream
everyone has where all their teeth fall out.
And there's a little girl
at the end of the docks
unmooring all the boats
because she thinks they'll float away,
but they just sink.
You see,
no amount of blood can change the colour of the sea
and nothing makes sense if there's no you and me.
I want to show you that I write like I ****,
with wide eyes,
both hands
and all over the house.
I want to tell you that I've been in love with you since I was 15,
that I want to sings songs to you from the passenger seat,
I want to make your bed and watch you fix the tv.
I want to look you in the mouth
and not worry that you'll walk away without looking at mine

He's not a man of many graces,
fewer teeth than tongues
but he won't say much with his lips.

He's at his strongest when you push,
but never from a kiss.
See,
he's stubborn in every way that doesn't matter,
in every principle that has no lesson.

I've bent the spines of fragile men
to see how far they'll go
before they break,
before they'll form into a crest
of his back that I can't dig from my head.
I've watched them fall in love with me
because I thought that maybe
one of them would empty me,
but they didn't.

He is an ill-mannered world,
the kind that breads creation.
A manifestation of passion and fear.
With eyes that dug twelve foot tunnels in my veins
and went there to die.

A man of simple needs,
plesantaries and shaky knees.
But he doesn't want to see you quiver,
*he only wants to know it.

I feel the weight of my words
crumble more with every day
that passes by,
like Autumn leaves beneath
my feet.
And I wonder if they ever
meant anything,
or if they ever will again.
Someone once told me that
life is merely a series of moments,
like blury foreign films
watched in a ***** haze.
Our lives are but a silver platter
of stories that can hardly be proven,
only eaten by those who listen.
There will never be certainty
that "then" ever really happened,
that words were ever said,
or even felt.
We are insignificant figures
of organic matter
and restless molecules
that spit out words,
to form phrases,
to form moments,
that never truly occur.
And again,
I wonder if I ever meant anything,
or if I ever will again.

He abandoned you for no-mans-land
For ****** souls and bullet holes
With blood as thick as water
And it wasn't the first time you drowned in shallow seas
Your wounds won't clot unless you touch them
And you won't find plasters between sheets
History repeats itself
And you're becoming your mother
But if you pull apart your skin for long enough
Maybe you'll find solace
Or maybe you'll bleed out

Life's entirety - bled out across bed sheets
A soul as dense as my morning coffee, still in its infancy
She buried him beside the shed, beneath the Mulberry tree
Storks brought no bundles to any doorstep that Summer
For Winter murdered everything they had, and the next Autumn was very foreign

They named him Angelo, before or after - I am unsure
Mother Mary was there, ghostly floating above his head
The coffin didn't fit right, left it open
She couldn't take another foot to holy grounds thereafter
Not since God took away her son

She wrote it in a letter - before she bit the bullet
*"No Church, No Gods, No Masterpieces
This is sacrilegious"

your skin is the novel I never found the time to write
the kind to reside beside my bed
but every chapter is a break up letter to myself
and I keep passing them off as bed time stories - hiding them beneath your pillow in crumpled ***** of love notes
and god's word
you say you're not a prophet
but I swear you're the reason people still find comfort in the afterlife
and I stopped going to church after daddy left

I painted pictures of your chest
in every alter that would let me
but you're "not quite sure" how you feel about heresy
now you're sounding much like the pastor did on christmas,
with his drone of sinful scrutiny
and a pocket full of choir boys
you are the book in every top draw of every hotel ever slept in,
you are the force that brings babylon to its knees,
the hands that drowned the sea

They will write entire novels based solely on your eyes, create depths of intangible intimacy that can only result in displacement.

You will come to know of death before death.

They will dip their fingers in your blood and paint diagrams of love across your chest. You will transform into artwork, a selfish inspiration.

On nights that end in benevolence, they will be too frightened to speak; and you will never understand.

You will learn how to break, but more like waves and less like porcelain.

They can feel agony far beyond your compression. Your silence will be substance for extinction, *and a poet never forgets.

I want to see god. I want to know what god feels like.

I have traced the war torn lips of death
But never the relief of her graceful intimacy
She found me in a bed made up of morphine
With a stomach still regurgitating loss
Her undertone was pitiful and the octave never changed
But she was full of a warm embrace
By the skin of my teeth, I have touched her only on days that consist of threes
The hour of the unholy
The hour that god sleeps
And he plays my preys on repeat
But humanity still hides at the thought of my farewells
They reside between their bones and mourn their probable loss
They hold no flowers of remorse nor confine
But rather weep for their own, still and barely shifting
Leaving me to soak in fears and fright
They hold their lives in such decay, survival fit
And disregard my uncertain departure
In the face of death, many run home to hide beneath their beds
To mourn the loss of a soul not yet left
They fear the loss of their own in simulation
And will not give up preys for reconciliation
Leaving me to throb, to pulse and bleed dry in a bed made of white

I have run in fear of hierarchy and seudo embrace - to lay hands upon embroidered skin,
skin so arbitrarily tainted that it smells of innocent seas and eloquent loss.
I discovered ignorantly hand stitched protest that formed naivety in effortless waves.
An effort so void of physical touch and second sight,
that it resembles a vastness that once drowned the lesser version of my inhabitants.
I climbed mountains in length to hang upon a crucifix made of passion and scrutiny,
a comfort known by none but a malicious compliance requested by authority,
only to regenerate the secrecy of silence.

I've come to the intersection of
false law and steal bolt spines
My blood keeps pumping kerosene
and my lungs can hardly stutter
but they still beg me to breathe
No one ever tells you when it's
a good time to break and the last
time I tried to swallow it was a
handful of rispodol and my brother's
fingers down my throat
I woke up in January with a father
and the seams to my soul
But now I have neither and they
ask me to be still
I could count the apologies I
ever got from both on one hand
and none were from this man
They tell me to write because it
gives voice to my speech but I
found the library of my mind in
ashes when I asked for a plea
And I don't know if maybe she just
gave up on me or us both
But I've left laders outside my
window for all the hands that couldn't
hold me and all the lips that never
mind to tell me why
Does one bleed at the knees for a
shoulder to sleep or do I blister my feet?

I desire to perish,
yet I ask for health
I love another -
and thus I hate myself

He said it in blood rituals, in blasphemy
All soul and no body and arson as a hobby
He brought sugar cubes and moonshine - begged to lay with me just one last time
Seven months in counting since he made me die that night
Seven months in counting and now he wants to do it right
He was shaking on my door step, smelt of shame and desperation
He promised to be gentle
He won't yell and fists won't fly
He just kept saying "forever"
*"Forever baby, forever, just let me hold you for the night"

Far too long he has slept inside my head
He weeps for me as we lay in bed
I wanted no more than to die by his side
By all your commandments I have abide
But please do not ask of the price I've paid
For I must sleep in sheets you've made
But Lord, obsolve him of my sins
And I will throw his ashes to the wind
Help me accept the passing of his soul
He is the one who took upon much of this toll
For far too long my lover has been dead
For far too long I have slept with guilt inside my bed