I wade in milky bathwater of half-truths and falsities
until my fingers prune with spite toward the pale truth:
It's not me, it's you.
I'd like a thousand stags to trample on your vanity, crushing every ounce of you to dust.
I anticipate the anguish, sweeter than the vanilla-whites of your ugly eyes.
To say I thrive on your unhappiness is cold, but you're so pretty when you cry.

I couldn't tell your skin from sadness on the dryest, darkest nights.
I refused to acknowledge the rising tides that licked my ankles, threatening to fill my lungs with seafoam. I threw my head back and laughed, instead.
I, born of Neptune, am no different from the hungry tides. I want to wash you ashore and squeeze the water from your milky skin. You'll be as translucent as a jellyfish.
And I will smile, disgusted and aroused.

Her white-hot beauty was the tool with which I carved your name behind my eyes - in sleep I will remember you in fits of purple-blacks.

By the time the humming in my throat pushed past my lips, I could no longer drain the bile coursing through this hollow chest of mine.

I can’t find it in me to be sorry.

Tonight I will forget
the girl with the ribbons
that curled around her hair like ivy;
whose hands were almost as cold
as her heart.

I read into her
like the pages of a book,
and I mapped the corners of each page
with my thumb,
though it was she who veiled me
in fingerprints.

I wanted to memorize her,
but the pages were split apart
and on some days
entire chapters would disappear.

She funneled a private winter
to my blazing August nights,
and even when shut up in the smallest, warmest chamber,
I shivered all the same.

I submerged myself in her
as if she were the night
and foolishly I pushed to see past
the sharp, silver moons that hung
preceding nothing more than contempt.

In the snowy afternoon
I peel myself from her
and soon the night is nothing more than
limbo between dusk and dawn.

I pass the time counting sheep
there is nothing I do better
sixty-six, sixty-seven
nights since I've slept.

There are ghosts that stir inside of her,
shimmering and wraithlike.

The desperate ways
in which she's mooned
have craned and fused
and become a part of her.
They've since dissolved
and left a hollow
in their place.

And though she knows
they aren't there,
she feels them
crushing, crushing, crushing
all the same.
Without their heavy presence,
she is left
with an idle ache.

Unable to separate herself from the ghosts,
she will indulge in the sickly-sweetness of yesterday.
She will enclave herself in the ghostly, glimmering fog,
breathing sticky recollection
that will cling to her lungs like ash,
and smother her.

It is almost cruel
how the scent that your skin left
on my sheets
still finds a way to charm my dreams.

The fragments of you
with which I shamelessly decorate my conscience
and everything in-between
have found their way to my center.

They rise up in my throat
and I try to force them down
but it is always too late at night
to find the strength.

As I bury myself
in all the words I wish you'd say
I feel as if
my bones might turn to dust.

The entire world
might have dissolved around me;
if it has,
I haven't noticed.

The only time I'm sure
that I exist
is when I see my reflection
in your eyes.