Your sleeping breath sounded
Like the whistling
Of a crisp and frigid wind
And it’s howls between
The narrow and somber buildings
In a slumbering winter city
Whose chatter is smothered
Beneath a gentle and bitter
January snow.

The glass fogs cold from a muddy brew
Matching the sweat on your brow like morning dew

Falling into love and falling into routine
A waterlogged man seeking a mountain’s dream

Termites gnaw at the wood in my head
The chores, the anger, the existential dread.

A penny for your thoughts, a dime if you know me
A quarter for investment, a dollar for apathy.

We tried to meet
on a cosmic plane
and that is why I loved you.
Because we believed in
magic and conspiracies
yet you had the audacity
to believe soulmates,
were disingenuous
and phantoms were real.

A soul on fire
A-light,
A-glow.
Where fate tempts me
I dare not go.

A hand so warm,
Gentle,
Alive.
Tender embraces
welcome brisk goodbyes.

A skip in step,
flutter
in chest
I dare not hope
When I know best.

I have found a reason to
Spite the freckles on his back
Like china speckled with mud
And I despise the way his
Eyes bore into me
Like an earthworm in loam
digging.
There’s nothing to find here.
His small mouth has a poignant humidity as
It makes its best attempt to consume me
Leaving slug-like trails in its wake
of devour
across my brittle shell.
I sling an arm across my eyes lazily
So I don’t have to see his hunger
But still smell his desperation
he pounds into me like
his sour *** will prove to me something.
His fingernails dig into my shoulders
And he’s trying to pull me inside of himself.
I cannot occupy you.
It is the only way he thinks
He can make me his
But I belong to nobody.
I endure encounters like
I endure watching clouds roll by
Softly on my back with no utterance.
You cannot rule me with your passion
Your wanting kisses and timid bites
Leave your mouth bitter
And alone.

you are the ripple of a stream
you are a passing-by dream
you are the hum in my throat,
you are an after-**** smoke
you are the sweat in my bed
you are the noise in my head
you are the letters i write
you are the receding night
you are the smell of cologne
you are a king been dethroned.