you filter yourself dark,
skin shining on the floor
of your hotel room.

your hold your camera up,
white-painted talons
wrapped around your phone.

you dusk your skin and
dawn your face. night your
body and make you late.

tipping your face down
and letting the water
fall, you want likes at home.

you no longer plead for me to call,
it's an order because you know
i'll obey. you pull me by the metal
lead, wrap a medal leash around
my neck, weighed down with the gold

of your lip print against
the dangling token, sometimes when
you sleep you push my name
into the blue clouds with a whisper
and i always come back down.

I am a shifting sky,
pale of pomegranate pink
to the desert plains of your
sloping skin stretched over
your bony fingers. Please think
of me when you press digits
to your lips, feel inked
numbers pulse in your pocket.
Expect me in a leather jacket
shining like oil-packed puddles,
breath heavy like smacking cigars
against brick walls and tonguing
the mortar. Expect me burrowing
my nails underneath your wedding
veil, chipped polish closing
in on the chiffon, expect my noose
of sheets to use your fabric softener,
the scent of your bed, fresh,
before we laid down in it.

you inhale and type you wish
for a body bruising sweat syruped
half passed lover, you've got
crisp greens, white shoes and
soapy molars and citrus skin

my lover and I are young and have
nothing of you, ankle deep pools
of puddled people, we have none
at the dinner table but each others
faces at the silver Saturn plates

collarbone pressed to the windowpane,
the green hills roll down your house,
trickle down into the water and sift
into sand, stretch out the coast

across that ocean, i am waiting,
i lift my foot off the ground and twirl,
body pointed like a weather-vane
metallic and rusting to you

when i see you our mouths will fuse
and i'll paint you concrete like the city
and your eyes will be revolving doors
that adults get stuck in to twirl

there are girls with red panels
down their arms as if they have
been bolted with puncturing plastic,
as if they are robots who whine
in binary code.

"if you have scratched yourself
a few times, you have not cut"
and she lived in a shed,
floorboards pressed to her cheek,
nuts and bolts in her ****** hallows,
pumped with drugs for a white throat.

she should know. i do not deserve
to feel free. i should have never
pushed my razors under paper
wads in my trashcan. i should have
kept them and drag silver over
my skin for shaving, leave me ready
for the next boy with rose hair
and wide, chlorined smile eyes.

there are girls who do not romanticize
romantic illness, like depression isn't
a rose in a jar in your throat, black
and bottle borne and biting at the flesh,
but never talk about recovery. "it's good,"
i am about to say, but i do not know
what it is like to bleed out my body,
spoon out my insides and throw
them away, shudder at lit streetlights
and let tears slink towards bathroom tiles.

that girl is gnashing fangs and painted lips
when the pastel sun scrapes floorboards
across her naked shoulders. that girl is
sparking static eyes and she holds
snowy screens in her palms,

her lovers bury their faces in her chest
smudging saliva across her shirt
leather-fingers scrummaging
over her ribs, jabbing with
tongue, thumb smudged on the
doorbell, as his jaw meets dawn,

and he returns, scratched glass mirror
pulling in him by an aquiline nose,
aquamarine veins pulsing as palms
set upon the ice, blood knuckles
and cracked nails setting in the surface.

Last night your fingers threaded
Through mine like plastic vines
In a gallery, grapes dripping like lime
Drops off of peels. "You'd better not
Leave me," you murmured, buses
Shuddering down your throat,
Passengers coughing with plastic
Coated family members. My hands
Pulled up my waistband, damp
And smudged with your lipstick,
Pursed mouth pressed to fabric.
"I won't," I answered, and you tasted
Like frosted cold before snow,
Grey scapes and city spread over tongue,
Salt and strawberry pink dotted thighs.

flip of the fingers house of your hands
steepled fingers like wooden roofbeams
diamond studded knuckles, rugby thumbs
palms over the dome and push doors

blueberry jars clink with raspberry under
the faded overhang of the balcony, leaves
me for sale and fortunate, slated skin,
mouthed promises against pixel skimmimg

the flowery, transparent lace scoping up from
behind me and ending at my waist. when he
pushes his hand and cups the skin, i feel
emptier than i was after the dinner i had,
mounds of rice and bean scoops as your
forehead pressed against the mesa and
you said you loved her. at midnight,
the blue bathroom tile bruises my forehead
and i kiss it, lips against mold and mildew.
the next morning, you say i am not *****
and i mumble yes, pinching milk-soaked
cornflakes from my cereal bowl between
my fingertips and placing them on my tongue.

starting fires in alleyways and watching flames lick across brick
rubbing damp clay dolls across palms to chase warmth in winter
picking fake leaves off of plastic plants and flicking fern on floor
crouching next to walnut pots and standing to the doorway sides
grazing static on the television as pearl teeth knock across the pane
kissing knuckles and letting silver spikes snake between your teeth

breaking might be like running my fingers through the fields of your hair
sowing flowers in the empty crevices that separate the folds of my skin
walking by your crated white-picked house in the brisk afternoon
laying a hollowed hand over the denim jacket before my upticked heart
pressing lips to letters hoping that they'll be ripped open tomorrow
plunging eyes inside the envelope waiting to read what i write

the lines of the grates in the radiator
imprint onto the backs of my legs
people shuffle through the lobby,
swishing peacoats and snowflakes
dripping from their hoodies. i curl
my fingers around the phone
and press you closer to my ear.  

i've always wanted you closer.
you're tangled in earbuds
on the bus, arm wrapped
through the straps of your bag.
you wear someone else's grey
varsity sweater, red letters marked
across the chest. you lock
your windows before you go
to sleep, white paint chipping
and painting your nails.
your goodnights are eclipses of
the daring day stepping out
without clothes and reminding me
it's time to stop with you.

"i think i'm going to get help"
you rasp, and i am silent as a family
toddles through, children clinging
onto the swollen mittens at their
mothers' sides. i swallow and
lean against the wall, sit against
the radiator, cross my ankles
over the blowing heat.

here we are shaking
here we are

a slit to make your jawline,
i dig my fingers through
and find the blood dripping
down my hand to turn
my skin pink. the evening
i left you, the classroom
was cold and you said

at home my reflection is rainbow
spiked and glass sharded in the
bus windows. at home my hands
shake when i pass our streets.
at home i think of the way you'd
look dead and wish it'd happen
soon. your ink skin against paper
thin sheets is what i need.

here i am shaking
here i am