I strung Christmas lights on my bed
Because they make me happy
Because they make my dreams brighter
But some nights
We don't say goodnight
And I can taste the bitterness
On your tongue
Like rock salt and toothpaste
Those nights
I unplug the lights
Because those nights
I don't deserve them

I think about the way I would hold you
If you were with me at night
The gentle way my hands would fold themselves
Across your hips
And the soft canvas of your skin
Brushing against the drying paint of mine
The way my hands would fall into the grooves
Of your collarbone
Like snow falling on tree branches
My fingers like snowflakes fluttering down
On your neck
And how I’d carefully cover your mouth with my palm
So no one would hear your screams
As I throttled you until your neck snapped

Jumanji was your favorite Robin Williams movie
Mine was Dead Poets Society
You didn’t think it was too interesting
And you fell asleep on my shoulder
When we watched it on a pixilated
2” by 5” screen
Moving at 1 ½ miles per hour
On a bus
Going 5000 frames per second
Over a burnt sandwich chips
We stopped near Michigan and State
To talk about our favourite books
Yours was As I Lay Dying
Mine was The Old Man And The Sea
We talked about the relationship
Between Faulkner
And Hemmingway
And if they ever kissed
Or shared coffee
Or at least thought about it
If Faulkner liked Jumanji
And Hemmingway was partial
To Dead Poets Society
If it turned out
They were chips of a fractured whole
Did Faulkner ever take Hemmingway home?
Does the Hemmingway house still have Faulkner’s toothbrush
On a splintered wooden nightstand?
Did they ever wake up with the wrong socks on the wrong feet
And laugh it off because it was so funny
Were they ever afraid?
Were they ever happy?
Did Faulkner write to Hemmingway
About the Post office?
Did Hemmingway write to Faulkner
About fishing?
“The old man lay dying in the sea”
We wondered if they ever wrote together
Held hands
Traded coffee cups
But you fell asleep
And I kept writing
And watching Dead Poets Society
Wondering if Hemmingway ever would have

I should get butterflies in my stomach
Every time I look at you
But I don’t
Instead
I feel this buzzing
A beehive stuck in my abdomen
Burning and stinging underneath my ribcage
Moving up into my lungs
Puncturing the thin tissue lining
Filling them up with blood and honey
Flying into my throat
I can’t speak
But at least I can taste
The sweetness of the honey in my mouth
As you walk away

Nature disservices poetry
Because leaves of grass
Contain more water
Than my poems could ever shed
Because trees hide more truths
Than my poems could ever conceal
Because the tiniest mayfly
Knows more disparaging cruelty
Sheds more blood
And ***** more often
Than my poems ever could
Nature is the beatest poet
And that is why
I won’t recycle

​Bricks bruise the front lawn of
​The mausoleum
​Taking hostage the sanctity
​Of some long-forgotten man
​Decaying
​Like bricks decay
​As if
​The wolf
​Eroded it down
​With spit and wind
​Too long ago
​To be remembered

Stained Taco Bell napkins crunch beneath my sprained ankles in the back of your truck
The snap crackle pop of the radio itching my ear your ***** holding together a Rice Krispie treat crushing my jaw
Too sweet for my mouth you hold my hair in place pulling and ripping your finger nails a pack of wild dogs fighting over a dying deer on my skull
The back of your mother's truck smells like cologne and portillos fries like the first day I met you
The sun setting through the trees
And the back window
Just enough light so that I can see the ash gray carpet and the gray ash from the spot on my skin you put your cigarette out on
The white spots beneath your nose I imagined they were tiny moons and you were just a werewolf tearing apart the man who used to be in the back of his mother's truck now whiskey sour the way mad men change under full moons
Stretching past an empty interstate road
I saw the sun set
And saw the sun set
And saw the sun set.