my reflection, anatomical inaccuracy reads something like:

fairy dust in a silt layer, bones all shattered at the press of her fingers, and for months I molded a sandcastle around the soft

sinking, drinking ichor from a cocktail glass and dragging nails across my discomfort -

did you see that girl taking a tempest inside herself, to warp her sinew, spreading from this side of the universe to other?

in the lamplight I bit a secret onto the ridge of her spine; *sometimes I sleep near fires hoping my insides become glass

when you smile only your lips move
you’re a beautiful portrait of starched shirts and graceful misery
a whole tragedy told in your bared teeth and narrowed eyes.

when the soft moonlight runs down your face
all i see is plastic flesh and fine lines
jagged edges, discolored hollows—a broken sort of beauty.

the cigarettes and alcohol run electric in your veins;
you are gunpowder and grenadine, razor
    blades and tar. sticky and corroding, sharp and broken.

you wear your jaundice like a punishment
a rotting underneath a supple olive complexion,
from the neglected depths of your weary body.

you are a child with an old man’s scars.
your lost youth poisoned with a misery so heavy
it’s as if you've seen the world and lived through it twice.

you inhale the wild air and you breathe out toxins:
everything about you is decaying and rotting and dying
but in your erratic pulse i hear a muted plea: don’t let me die.

so i lean over, and into you
and let you take in the oxygen of my lungs
and the lingering mint on my tongue.

breathe me:
let me save you from drowning
in lungfuls of nicotine numbness and hallucinogen delusions.

for you in full blossom, i inhale
and exhale the ephemeral, dissonant beauty of your mortality.

we are two anarchists beckoning each other
with alluring eyes full of longing, so sticky-sweet.
caught in the trance of each other’s honeyed promises,
we embrace with the elegance of clashing armies.

come closer, let my wandering fingertips find
            a home       in stretches of taut skin, valleys    
            and crevices,
                                     coy smiles, igneous eyes; can i entice
                                     you to dance?

but where there was skin she finds only armor plates,
       where there was vulnerability, only hardened resolve.
       where our thorned bodies join crimson blossoms bloom:
flowers of anarchy flourishing in the eye      of the hurricane,
the peculiar beauty of us.

we make the portrait of orderly discord.

i still taste you on
the tip of my tongue,
sharp and silky and starry
even my neck remembers
your lazy lips and naughty violet imprint
i still see myself
fragile in your moonlit eyes
between soft blinks
and gentle crinkles

unwillingly slipping
into melting amnesias
and hazy evasion forces its way
down my throat
it dances fractals in my lungs
taunting me,
discarnate and disbodied
drifting ethereals turned ghostly fog
staining my crooked memories

the voices, they become
white noise. white smoke,
           my wide eyes are
wandering again
in search of you

behind foggy windows and
along the lines where walls meet
ceilings. your shoulders,
they are too silent today--
I lose your blue-rimmed

certainty in the current.
do you hear me calling?
you begin to turn--
          dark hair, sharp edges
but the voices become

miles

           and we are lost.

As the day fades into night,
Where the stars shine bright
They mingle, they dance like clusters of delight
A quiet evening beckons me
With a glass of red and a nice cool breeze
That gently caresses my face
To ready myself for a good night's embrace