On my darkest nights
I awaken in the ocean
lost

your constellations branded
against the back of my tongue.

A bloom of tattooed moonlight
the senselessness of slumber--

though this ocean swallows me,
I will stay afloat.

Promise you will come.

When the light embraces dark
when the planets fade like scars,

promise.

So that we
might be the moment
of everything.

I believed that I was done
wasting thoughts on you

but memory is relentless.

I remember very little.

A hug of tweed
a porcelain sparrow.

Everything burns like a cigarette,
but you tasted better.

Remember our first kiss

your lips were hard and urgent

I searched so long
for another mouth
that felt like yours.

I was at home in the crooks of your arm,
tall above the root.

Our sweet-bark skin, new spring at hand,
trepidation rendered mute.

The earth succumbed to restless sleep
as I ebbed between your palms.

The moss and shroom a witness
to the wilting of our psalm.


But the story the crow told me,

is the only one he knows:

like the morning sun you come,
and like the wind go.

Your trail of ash
bright as a scar

lead me astray
in skies of tar

it was a threadbare
love affair

doomed from the very start

and if I know
you at all,


I know you've gone too far.

I want to be
in a flesh warm home
with walls the color
of bone.

One of the homes
where ugly is kept
'neath fresh white faces

and all that lies
'hind lily frames
inevitably erases.

"Dreamers" would be kind, but no--
two liars
from the start.

We can't exist
outside this place

the streets lead us
apart.