he pressed any farther and I might explode
bleed with internal bruising
or go home
or sit in my car in the rain and cry
drive out each street in the smooth electric dark

I would have closed myself
in a padded box
ran heavy into the fog
sank deep into wide open black pupils
out of reach

to be impossible to touch
but feel every single thing
like a white burn
or a long knife

to
stare at you and not say a word
not say a word all day
i’m in the middle of an ocean of reaction
and it is perfectly still on the surface over mile long depths
and you’re pounding on the windows of an empty house
slamming your fists into the three inch thick ice of a frozen lake
screaming and roaring as you sit there quietly nervous
I hear you
and you hate me a little bit because you love me too much

but there were swift and silent teeth
sharp as noon
ripping through our paper trails
through my skin and my veins
to my bone

I'm being taken by tremors.

pour your burning coals onto my head
spit into my evil eye
me
Judas
knowing God as guilt and
spilling over with guilt

I drove out every street in the middle of the night
I was coronated by the rain
glistening
with shoulders hanging from the sky
I spun around and around in my head
the trees danced and pulled at each other and at me

and I entered cathedrals
wandered into hallways alone again
with softest footfall
kneeled to cruel earth,
and slowly washed away with the runoff

in a thousand directions at once, and at three thousand degrees
rushed breaking shattering gray veil after gray veil - parting them all like a sea
with mere energy of joy. Held back, shaking pulling at the gate for too long.
39.244667,-121.052524
like a bell ringing from a church steeple
like the first time you felt it too
like mountain incline
like contact
like getting up again after a blow to the face
like the sight of the sky straight above

light with a new wavelength,
split fast into the dark
oak leaves falling and spreading in frigid air blacker than night
and rich and alive and rushing toward me like sound
I held on, screaming my lungs to death! bathed reveled in the confusion.
I was there with my eyes wide open, my heart beat so fast over your nightmares.

and I loved you.
I loved you I loved you I loved you

My heart rests on my lungs all the time
settles into my lung.

Laying on my side thinking
left side brain thoughts
until I turn over and find you.
And then there you’re curled up nestled in the right side

I remember a feeling from a dream I had. I swell a little bit.
Turn onto my stomach and it all moves, a white wave to the frontal lobe.
Then there I’m wading through you, putting my fingers into dopamine tide pools,
widest eyes in clandestine memories.

Watching you laugh with the biggest part of the sky caught in the curve of your mouth
lurching when the world froze that way forever for a second.
Wanting you to stay as long as I’m there.

Conjuring you and your little evening glow,
because
I need company.

he’s going to falter fold out like a staircase
in the face of
cambrian ice and you’ll hold yourself out like
you could have been absolution itself



you’ll be thinking about the ones that look like they’re comfortable
in their own skin and poked out light
and upward facing rays and upturned faces
and scattered papers



you’ll be versed in angel’s tongues
but paralyzed by syntactic blindness
silenced by the dome and everything thats happening
without you

sometimes you come back,
like the peculiar awareness of finitude
soft footed
after we’d been in that small room together
cold
pouring out in white light
leaning over and smiling gently
with a surety of falling snow winter outside
and you described seattle and kurt cobain
and showed me your jars of sand and jars of honey
and I smiled gently and loved you.
and we went out in the cold and you smoked a cigarette
and everything around us was hushed wet in dark gray
you were something that made me ache
honest human, dark and earnest
opened ahead of me
wise and naive
I felt like I’d known you somewhere before
I held you in my vision but didn’t speak

as you told me what men had done to you
I picked up something that was shining on the ground
and thought about what men had done to me

I would have laid out the universe

As you laid there, as though invisible.
sending strands of color over you
through me, venous
I watched and listened
your messengers to me
tilted my head
rolled around pushed water out of my lungs
touched you, glanced you barely,
on the knee. nodded slowly, with my eyes open. adored you for an instant

pulled
all things in waves.
pushed

your breath on my neck
hit and left me
a horse feels the water at its ears
and struggles not to drown.

undone skin
knew you weren't there,
but wandered for something anyway

joy in confusion, I knew
could be the beginning
of learning joy in
learning joy

when I put it on your shoulder,
something tight in my head
got caught
and

I went to the river
wishing to death, (as it slowly unraveled,)
I'd left with you