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when this sickness has become the identity of your anatomy every scratch that doesn't bleed out is a worship song. every time i knock on the door and you are alive to open it i wanna melt down my house keys forever. i wanna tell you that any other taste of metal that promises you home is the blasphemy of your chemistry. i can't sit back and watch my only brother's mind turn into a car stalled across train tracks. i can't look at his throat anymore and only see a rope. i wanna open his skull and see where the ******* are hiding. i wanna pull chemicals from his brain like teeth. there's 3 years and 2 suicide attempts between us and i want to keep death farther from him than anyone ever kept it from me. i want to make his hands look like anything but a reason. i want to make the voices sound like anything but his own. i want to make them sound like anything but permission.
Don't get too close,
they never told me if it's contagious ,
or not.

My heart is broken,
not hurt, like yours,
but it truly beats out of time.
It beats like a seizing drummer;
all panicked and hanging on
for dear life,
like two little sticks
can spare the strife.

He's mistaken,
that little drummer boy,
for his clock never ticks
the way it was meant to.
It does get bigger, though,
but they tell me that's bad too.
It doesn't grow like a flowering love,
No.
It enlarges like it's dying
from working overtime
all the time.
Don't add to it's burden, please.
Just take what you want
and leave.
Leave the rest of this diseased part for me.
I need every ounce it has
to survive as long as I can.

Don't get too close.
Don't drain what's left of me.
I need this heart to breath.
 Jan 2016 Marco Mondragon
claire
That thing she did. It was so innocuous, so accidental, so minor, yet it awakened you. It consumes your headspace. Follows you through hours and days. Makes appearances in your dreams, kissing the edges of your mind. Because of it, you know what it feels like to want someone so much you grow a second heart. Such a gesture should be easily forgotten, but you can’t forget the belly-rolling starburst of it, the oh. That thing she did, it told you who you are. In one split-second act. It grabbed you by the collar, looked you in the eye, and said her. It’s her. Are you brave enough to listen?

2. You want to feign your own fall just so she will lean over you, blocking the sky, beautiful and concentrated. So she will hold your wrist and feel for your rabbit pulse. So you can blink up at her with an excuse for not looking away.

3. She’s sitting there sketching a tree in the margin of her notebook, and she is a miracle. You would die for her. The thought startles you. You want to kiss her, want it savagely, which startles you, too. Your hands stay balled in your lap, half-clenched and trembling.

4. You move and it’s just enough to push the two of you together. Which is, god, the best thing you have ever felt. She draws her eyes toward you with the soft look that takes you out every time. Her arm is pressing yours, solid and warm. You flush and can’t understand why, but you should. That blush knows everything you haven’t yet figured out.

5. You watch her when she leaves, always. You can’t help it. She’s furiously lovely, so much your chest is sore at the sight of her. She hurts you, this girl. She moves you.
i.
incessant and impossible
your heart beats the electric miracle of will

ii.
your chest feels like home
even when you are cold
and forget the feeling of front doors

iii.
nothing ever felt so warm
as the soft earth of your hands
and you are a gardener

iv.
lovers fall helpless
into the open arms of your gentle spirit

v.
you love with a safety and assurance
that morning will come
and it will come with a shining
it will come and it will come jubilant
it will come warm and safe and full

vi.
in love, you will be warm and safe and full

vii.
in you, days of empty vanish
like ice on windshields
from nights slept in socks

viii.
you will only know cold temporary

ix.
all things gold will stay and stay for you

x.
all things gold will stay and stay for you
nothing more to be born of the ash
nothing more to be born of me
flesh stretching to give and exhale in giving
inhaling smoke and sweetness inhaling
my throat a museum of anniversaries
pain with meaning
revisiting grave sites of people still breathing
breath for screaming
washing the ghosts of your hands
out of my clothing
because loving is leaving
oil of your skin in the water from my eyes
running from feeling
these poisons my body is cleaning
senses left reeling
your touch still so appealing
your face so seldom appearing
Trust,
I thought I could share that with you,
But know,
I don't know if I can trust anyone,
Not even myself,

I feel like I'm the monster here,
Even though I didn't go back on my word,
If only you could see in my head,
You'll know why I feel as I do,
I can't trust myself around you,
And now I can't trust you.
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