you loved me
the way i love dirt.
like a promise,
a glimmering spark,
a catch on the inhale.
a soft and malleable thing
glowing faintly from its core.

you loved me like i love
dusty records and animal bones.
you loved me ephemera,
your glittering oddity,
your very best party trick.
i loved you all the magic
i could muster.

i loved you
every star i'd ever counted and
the memory of falling and
the shapes of all my favorite words.
you loved me
pheromones and
midmorning drunk dials.

you prayed and you promised and
you slipped your shaky fingers
five fathoms deep beneath my skin
and tenderly uprooted my veins.
you sweetly cracked
my ribcage wide and
picked all the seeds from my guts.
you lit up my new hollows
and found you hated
clean white walls.
you never quite forgave
the way i let you ****
the parts of me that you
knew how to love.
i loved you flooded lungs and
atheist's prayers
and never enough.

you loved me
the way i love dirt,
and sometimes in my dreams,
i cover you in daisies
and weeds
and trees with tough roots.
i watch the wild things
climb high and nest in the branches
stretching out from your ribcage,
wildflowers tangling their roots
through your bones,
your body a home
at last.

today is sixty paces south of heaven
reaching skyward.
here is dust in my lungs
and earth on my tongue
and half a hallelujah
strangled somewhere in my throat.
here is the ghost of every god
i ever believed in.

i fill my mouth with
promises and dirt
so there is no space left for poison.
there is no space left for anything,
but some days even breathing is a chore and
staying alive is the best i can do.
today i choke the gravel down with water because
today i can do better.

today is sixty paces south of heaven
and the stars are only glitter
and every lie i ever told curls up through thick summer air
and dissipates like smoke.
here are outstretched arms
and ***** fingers,
and here, slithering through the tall grass,
is a soft unknown that feels an awful lot like
hope.

your words drip incandescent glitter-trails
and pool at your feet
in a sparkling graveyard of shattered glass
and unheeded warnings.

i don't believe in much,
but you said maybe we met for a reason and that
maybe the reason was to keep each other alive,
and it seemed as true as anything else i'd ever heard
and approximately twice as beautiful.

i don't believe in fate,
but i have ****** the wild hope into my lungs
that some cosmic force could trust me
with something this important,
that some great mysterious power
sending ripples through the stars
could have loved me enough to lead me here.

we are not the beautiful and broken.
we are the wild and the wanting and
the howl that rattles hollow bones.
we are the wounded and the wicked
and unbound.
we are the things that learned to live in the dark;
from our bones crawl the faintly-glowing bodies
that will out-survive the sun.

your lungs cough out prayers like my lungs cough out tar,
like my hands clasp bottles like your hands clasp blades,
like our hands clasp hands,
like i had never in my life heard someone's stories louder than the stars
until you told me yours on the roof of the abandoned hotel,
until i saw the universe bend tight around your words
and for once the height didn't **** the air from my lungs and
for once i thought about something other than jumping.

nothing really feels like home these days,
but there's moments with you i feel human and
i'll take all the reasons i can find
not to step out in front of a train.
i want to watch you breathe
without some great shadow-hand holding onto your lungs,
and i don't ever want you to forget how sunlight feels.

you and i, we were born survivors,
and life has a way of reclaiming scorched land,
of stretching its great green tendrils
up through sidewalk cracks.
i don't believe in much,
but god,
do i believe in us.

fairy whispers and inky half-formed memories beat shattered-glass moth wings against the brittle crystal cavern of your skull.

wait.

it's been a long time since you
remembered how to breathe,
and maybe that's why sometimes you sit in the surf and **** the ocean into your lungs,
and maybe that's why you smoke,
so that for thirty seconds it's okay
to look like you are choking.

inhale spun sugar and dreaming dust.
exhale chalk and emptiness.

wait.

maybe someday you will cough all the shards out of your lungs.
today you take shots so you have permission
to let the burn flicker across your face
and you jump into freezing water so you don't have to explain
why you always look like you are drowning.

it's not rest, but it's the closest thing you can remember.

maybe one day you'll stop feeling so
raw.

i loved you like a car crash.
i loved you skidding tires
and screeching brakes
and shattered glass.
i loved you three lanes shut down on the freeway.

i loved you cracked palms
and cigarette burns
and shredded skin.
i loved you mouthfuls of smoke
and blood
and prayers.
i loved you holy morning moments
and sips of coffee;
i loved you dopamine
and alprazolam.

i loved you sharp and cold and metal.

i loved you sweaty sunsets in your car
when you read the bruises on my thighs like rorsarch blots
and i traced constellations in your scars.

i loved you broken
because your shards fit so beautifully with mine.

i loved you ragged.
i loved you desperate.
i loved you hurting and wanting and whispering.

i used to wake up screaming every time i dreamed of you,
but these days i just wake up empty
and cold
and aching in the spaces your hands used to fill.

in my dream last night,
you kissed me,
and i woke up this morning
with questions and
a cold