We were on a roof, dancing, twirling, and getting so close to the edge a slight error in movement would send
us plummeting to the sand a hundred feet below.
I held his hand and we progressed like a current of illuminated pearls bouncing on a trampoline.
An old man sat against the building and stared off into the distance.
He reminded me of my great grandfather who had passed.
Only this old man wasn’t smiling, and I didn’t love him or miss him.
He began glaring at us like he wanted to rip our hands apart and split the energy we created within one another.
I pulled away from the boy and left him standing there.
He froze
when I let go of him,
turned black and white,
and became a motionless statue.
I knew if I lost sight of him for too long he would disappear, but I felt compelled to comfort the old man.
I went and sat next to him and asked what was wrong.
“Just need to find a purpose here, before I’m gone.” He grumbled, pulling a cigar from his front shirt pocket. “You got a light?”
I lit him a match, and asked him if he cared to dance.
“These legs don’t work like they used to. I’m not sure if I want my end just yet.”
I promised I wouldn’t let him fall.
“Just trust me. This is my dream. I won’t let you disappear. I want to be here as much as you do”

He hesitated, but slowly arose. I placed his wrinkled hands in mine, taking one last glance at the boy I left a statue. He dissipated into the air, his body blowing away like dust.

"You didn’t have to lose concentration on him, I’m not even supposed to be part of this dream." The old man felt guilty,
he knew I felt bad for him,
but I couldn’t help it.
"It’s alright, just tell me what you want to be. I won’t let go of you."
He told me he wanted to be 30 again, with silky black hair, a smooth forehead, a white suit, and a soft face. Everything else was up to me.
The cigar fell from his hand as he transformed into either his own fantasy, or one I created for him.
I cannot say for certain who decided what he would look like.
Perhaps he wasn’t just part of my dream, perhaps we were part of each others.
We started to spin in circles and we couldn’t stop.
    Dizzy,
        full of light, and effortlessly,
                we spun- my right hand in his right hand,
                      his left hand in my left hand.
I can’t even put into words the joy that pulsed through me the dizzier we became, tears growing in our eyes from the wind we created.
We spun so rapidly the roof began to drop from our feet, or else we were starting to fly. I lost sight of the building, I lost sight of the shackled walls, and they began to fade.
I knew something else had to change or else I would wake up and lose the old man forever.
He would die.
I knew he still thought we were dancing on the roof, so I had to convince him to jump off the edge with me.
"Are you crazy?" he sang,
at least it sounded like a song,
his voice was velvet chords.
"Yes!" I screamed and pulled him higher and higher and over the edge. His eyes clasped shut and he started to panic.
"Please, please look at me I don’t want to wake up!" I yelled shaking my arms as he became limp.

We fell.
We fell into warm thick water the color of pink cotton candy.
We were underwater when I remembered I could breath there without dying.
It was too late.
I was concentrating too much
   on the water,
     on the warmth,
          on the light hitting it’s surface.
He dissolved, and I had nothing else to hold on to. I had no choice but to wake up. Losing him forever.

Tall, and sagacious, with unassailable secrets
locked by crooked keys in rusted chests -
stoic glances - upturned lips hiding more I want to see.
I find the mountains of my skin between my fingers,
hands on my hips, squeeze,
push in and battle the duplicities: more or less.
Does he look?
He uses big words I look up in dictionaries
I wonder if he likes complicated clamor of endless infractions
like the books he reads, like the characters he keeps in his
brain's edifice. And I'm volatile, I want to be written, but I know, yes, I know
I should be writing myself.
But I am small, in ways, somewhat sagacious, slightly introverted.
Does that even count?
I stutter, and feel my chest unlock then I'm
grasping at it like hands catching nuts and bolts so heavy
they're slipping through my fingers to dance on the floor.
The pieces I lose
make musical clamor, and I wonder if he's fond of the genre.

Branches twisting in my head, stiff with frozen dew
-Things I maybe should have said and words I thought were true.
Branches crowding all the rooms it's hard to find my way
We fell apart like fallen leaves in autumns cool decay.
These trees were once like works of art that hung upon our wall
until the frames all fell apart - we both just let them fall.
And what was left were skeletons of what was once serene
I thought that I could love - but tell me, what does that word mean?

There is wet sand in my veins
and I’ve never seen the ocean-
but I thought I saw it in your eyes.
Maybe I was only trying to find
the salt water
to help me float.
You were silken yet solid, a work of art
I felt I did not deserve.
Yet under every glistening
oceans’ waves
swims monsters and demons
we cannot see
or the pressure will crush us.
I am a cyclone
twisting in every direction:
dizzy, destructive, and dying.
But I am still. Too still.
Calm before the storm.
Calm before the storm.
If this is calm, god please
let me dissolve…

unattended- detached- jilted- vacant- disassociated

never been these things. wait- except-
                                sort of- internally.

physical- tangible- palpable- manifested- perceivABLE

here it is. see it? how pretty- it blankets the light.

how very ugly to me- as always.

amaranthine (adj.) - endless

  I have fallen in love over 735 times. Some things can not be stopped. I have worshiped fingers with my tongue, and memorized their muscle shapes and skin: everyone’s skin tastes different. I have relished voices and lips and the way sounds escape between them. At night I hear them in my head counting backwards for me, and lulling me into another lover.

  I have fallen in love with my dreams, every night. In the morning when I push my legs over the edge and take my first conscious breath, I realize I will never see you again. Dream.
    I don’t think I’ll ever master the absolute rebuilding of the dreams I never want to leave. Sometimes I feel so complete there, where I can’t look down and see my body, where I just exist in relativity. Wake up, Mourn.
       I have fallen in love with strangers ears, 80-something-year-old men who hold their wives wrinkled hands and kiss their sunken eyes, millions of freckles, thousands of laughs, and a plethora of senses.

Your clothes always had a film on them, I used to think it was *****, until I fell in love with the feel.

  He used to tell me I cared too much. Sometimes I doubted he really believed this, because when I was really crying [those big salty tears that make your eyes bluer], he would tell me “Wipe those crocodile tears away.”
  So I would try with the back of my hand, "but some things can not be stopped.

we are a rhythm,
your presence and mine.
the notes tap our skin
when our bodies entwine.
they dance up our legs,
and pulse through our hands,
and follow our kisses
wherever they land.

There's footsteps all over me..
maybe I should stand up.

I've carried your watch in my pocket for weeks
the silver brace stays cold
mocking my weary legs with its ice-circle.
and I could have sworn I just felt your fingertips
ticking on my thigh, the way you
nervously tap-tapped, an incessant habit.

And I still can't change your pillowcase
the one you nestled your sleepy
morning shadowed cheeks into.
I drown my face in it's  solemn scent of
your bittersweet traces; blueberries and aftershave.

As I drain my soul into its cotton,
    I wish you were here to scold me for
  leaving your pillow case damp and smeared ash black.