it is of the utmost importance that i stay i.
just like that poet said,
losing you does not feel like crushing a light bulb in my hand
more like slowly, but consistently, tugging out the glass.
i pray there are no shards here,
no glassy dust left underneath my fingernails.
i could still cry about you when i allow myself to mourn you still.

when i think of you my body shudders;
remembering loving,

remembering being unloved.

*october.5.2013

In my dreams you are always there.
Your fingers are in my mouth,
Your hand down my back,
Scratching slower and slower.
I can only hear you move and breathe and touch.
You are all I see.
Slow and slow and slow.
Your skin and your eyes and your mouth.
I don't even know how to write about all that you are.

You are so beautiful I don't know what to do.
You are so beautiful.

Gemini,
I am always trying to understand you.
I am always trying to capture your shadow self in action,
Hold it in my hands, understand all of him.
You are the book I am always reading,
You are always on my mind,
You are always on my mind.

Gemini,
Love and fear.
To belong, to matter,
To be misplaced, to be forgotten.
Your eyes are like two different oceans.
One smooth and love.
One choppy and rock.
Both are hungry,
Both scared,
Both not worked up about much of anything.

Gemini,
I want to light you inside.
I want to crawl into all parts of you
And make you feel more than what appears.

Gemini,
I want to love you.
I want to love you as moss loves rocks.
And trees love time.
And cherry blossoms love spring.
And clocks love seconds.
I want to love you as lilies love pads,
As suns love moons,
As nights love days.
I want to love you as houses love homes.
As blood loves veins,
As hearts love brains.

Gemini, I want to love you.

Gemini,
There is nothing more.
There is nothing more.
One day, these poems will make me cry.

Gemini,
I see you as no one else does.

Gemini,
With me, you can be whole.
You can be both.

Gemini,
I want to love you,
I do,
It is a sick thing.

Gemini,
There is nothing like you.
You are all there is.

Gemini,
I already love you.

She needs him more.
She has never needed someone.
It scares her to feel herself functioning off of someone else.
She wonders if he loves her.
Her mother tells her that they need to love her more.

More than what?
More than you love them.

His eyes write love letters inside her body,
His hands smooth all creases,
All lines.

When he kisses her she feels like she'll never stop.
When he asks her to stay,
When he holds her in his bed,
She feels like she'll never leave.

She closes her eyes against his shoulder
And she cries because she believes that
She would never find him.

He smells like home and old books.
Like warmth and dust.
Like he had been waiting so long.

My mother coloured your hair wet sand. My Nonno questioned me on your being, what colour your eyes are, your hair; he wants to meet you. One of the most important men in my life wants to sit with you and confound you with his Italian accent. He will likely offer you wine, ask you to come see the garden, take part in tasks my Oma has assigned, tell you about all the times we've broken his hammock, look at all the agates he and her have collected, he will tell you of me as a child, what I become in his embraces and through his songs. My Oma will talk to you sweetly, she will probably ask you about religion, I will not try to shield you of this, you could laugh, it would be alright. She will ask you about me, what are your favourite parts, what are your favourite parts. She will ask about what wonder you found in me; she will offer you blueberry pancakes, fried ham, maple syrup. You wonder so often why I told my parents, why my whole family knows of your existence. It is solely because you matter to me; because the more time I spend with you the more you become a part of me. And if I am to grow into another person, it is pertinent they see and know who it is I am growing to. Just as sitting with you and your brother in your basement is something to you as is my family seeing and knowing you. I want them to know that you are an ocean, wet sand and eyes like sea. There is nothing like you. The scent of you like sun and warmth and something drunken in. I wish I could swallow stacks of your picture just to keep you close to me only for a little while longer. There is so much of you that I want only for me.

Hazel. Hand in my hand, falling from great heights. My skin, my salvation. Hay-zelle. More a way of breathing than a way to pronounce ones name. Hay. Zelle.
He was H, just H on weekends. Haze in his business, teenagers calling on him to supply them with a haze of their own. He was ****** to his followers, 'whom God strengthens.'. But in my hands, he was always Hazel.
Was there someone before him? No. In fact, had there been previous exposure to one of his caste there would may have been no Hazel at all. Like muddled eyes his name refers to was he. An ocean inside of the mudslide in me. You can always count on the broken-hearted for a fistful of metaphors and similes that make nothing of themselves to you.
Souls and bodies, the ones that have chosen an orbit in the universe of me, this is what I loved like Hades to Persephone. Look at this sole pomegranate seed.

Persephone is crying in the Underworld
In rooms of pomegranates
And dark violet blooms
In places created to give her what Hades
believed he couldn't
“He walks as if he believes himself Death,”
She thinks
“He watches his reflection like Hera watches Zeus;
disgusted.
Always looking for some former glory.”
But the 3 Fates are his alone
How did he not see her coming?
She cries because she loves him
And he doesn't know how to love himself
She hands him pomegranate
And bloom
She shows him every mirror in her room
“How can you not love what is only an extension of me?”

The Gods wanted to think she did not love him
They found this easier to believe.