My favorite photograph of you
was ruined today
by a quick current
of cranberry juice.
Its blooming, rosy streams
bled right through
your face
and then you were
indistinguishable.

I merely sighed
not because I wasn’t sad
but because I have convinced myself
to expect such accidents
and accept them
as a part of us.

Last night, I told an old fir tree of you. The violet-blue of the night sky mocked me as I spilled my heart onto the dewy ground. I was met only with the lazy crickets’ chirp as I concluded my confession with ferocity. I couldn’t have expected them to understand. Sometimes, to me your palms look unfamiliar, something I have always feared but reluctantly forseen. I’m not one for superstition but I’ve smashed enough mirrors and spilled enough salt to know the consequences all too well. I spend each moment telling anyone that will listen about the imprint you’ve left on everything I’ll ever feel again. Not even my skin could breathe without you. And while it seems I’ve made you out to be a noose around my neck, none could ever say I spoke poorly of you.

Poolside eyes,
up to my knees in
iris, mint,
azure hues:
I cannot do them justice
but neither could she.

In the fall,
she’d change with the leaves:
green to gold,
clumsily.
Cool air hazed the space between
fact and illusion.

I could not
stop my trembling hands
I am slave
to sorrow
my bruised knees are going numb
I am dumb for you.

I have not
known sleep since you left,
I am blind
to solace
my swollen eyes are throbbing
I am ill with grief.

I will not
rinse you from my bones
I am deaf
to reason
my foolish heart is stubborn
I am yours alone.

She was the wilderness
in kind, earthy tones
and thick, lavish air
hanging heavy in the white
afternoon.

I was the ocean,
in heaving, sickish hues of green
and soapy, feverish fits
swelling onto the bay,
clumsily.

Her sunkissed stare,
and oleander skin
could bruise the freshest fruit
and so she left me with her
mark.

I spent August nights
dizzied by her spell
but encompassed in my sadness
I became
a ghost.

Even now, I drop apologies
like petals at her feet
and watch mournfully
as the yawning earth
flaunts her
as its bride.

He had a charm like the forest,
wet and murky
it could pull you under
like quicksand.

And like a simple reed,
I was part of him
not wholly insignificant
but expendable.

I would look on shyly,
as kaleidoscopes of grey-green mist
filtered through his underbrush
and finally encompassed me.

To fill one’s lungs
with his marsh-water
would be foolish,
yet divine.

I’d like to be your lungs,
a necessity,
forever expanding and contracting
always a place for me
inside of you.

Again I crack,
crumble
and settle at your feet.

Looking up at you,
you’re closer to the sun
than anyone should be.

I dampen my heels
in pools of nostalgia:
elixir of the heart
and a simultaneous poison.

Even the pale tree-leaves,
in a conspiracy
allude to you.

I tell myself
these circumstances
are beyond my control.

Sitting patiently,
I practice not thinking
of you.

One day my breath will catch
in my throat, forever
and my blood will run cold
and although I will feel
everything
slipping through my fingers
I will be paralysed, powerless,
left to watch it unfold
until there is nothing left of me.

One day the ground will swallow me up
I'll be nothing but dust
no trace of my existence
except unsent letters
addressed to you
that I'll have forgotten to burn.

One day, I will cease to exist,
spontaneously perish,
the universe will shift and I will be gone
inexplicably.
Nobody will remember who I was
because anybody who is anybody
is you.

One day, somebody will look into your eyes
and you won't want them to look away.

That will be the end of me.

Thoughtlessly, I pledged myself to her,
so in awe of the eloquence,
I handled her gently
and thought highly of her smile.

Isn't it funny
how quickly fondness turns sour?
How quickly one realizes
such beauty should be broken,
into a million little pieces
and scattered into the sea.

If she were a chinadoll,
I might have chipped away at her surface
until only rubble remained
or perhaps I might have cast her into a wall
and relished the sweet dissolution,
the wreckage that became of her.

Instead, I planted venom
into her skin, so that it might
intoxicate her simple-minded exterior
and show her what the world
is really made of.

She taught me more
about myself
than I could have possibly learned
on my own.

She spent her days in love
and I spent mine asleep

Me, I have no constant.
I speak in symbols and run-ons.
Disheveled prose streams
from my lashes
and burns onto the page:
a ritual.

This is not for you
or for him
or for her.

In the summer I would tremble
at the sound of rainfall.
This discourse sears its way
throughout my throat upon recollection.

Huddled close on humid nights,
we lit candles
and whispered of spirits
and auras
and the key to releasing the sky.

Her skilled fingers found the piano keys
and struck a sad, summer melody
that stretched throughout the house.
Like dust, I could only see her
in a band of daylight.

She looked ghostly at night;
her wispy, indistinct shape
moved and bent like a willow
alongside the lights
pinned to my wall.

By and by the morning would betray us,
and that's as far as I can recall
for the summer days quickly fade
and the ruins that remain
are far too parallel to dreams.

She was real, to me.

I've got a handbag full of stanzas
with your name all over them.

By the end of each week
I've crushed every word
into dust
and I watch from my window
as the crumbs rise
to form the milky way
(your favorite).

As the ruins ascended
through the layers of atmosphere,
they lost all consistency.
To you, they were minute flecks of gold
sparkling in the sky.

I linger on the impolite outskirts
of wishing-wells
and for each coin that ebbs to the floor,
I surrender another page to you.

And who knows,
maybe this complex is not complex at all
- a simple thread needing to be scored,
or maybe that
would be the end of me.

For all I know,
you're made of smoke and mirrors;
I could only hope for such a mild disease.

It was the heat.
That is the only conclusion I've come to.

It was far from
exclusively physical, in fact
it was primarily an inner-warmth.

I found myself persistently pressing
myself against his chest,
as if curling into him
would have an incubator-like effect.

I could be covered in a film of sweat
but beneath my skin I was frozen.
Not in the emotionless, stoic way
but in the starved for touch, anyone's touch way.

I wondered if everyone else
stayed as warm as him
all the time
or if it was just my own perception
which had a habit of being warped anyhow.

I was content with not knowing.
I didn't need to know everything,
or anything for that matter.

I filled my own gaps with
the consuming, wolfish ache
for that same warmth,
the only thing that could thaw my skin
and whatever lies beneath.

I must have only been able to endure
that frenzy for so long,
because now I discard the notion altogether;
hot or cold, it can't be helped.

I stand in your queue
but my legs give out.
I land, instead, on my knees.

A tempest or a lullaby –
a fierce roulette
of which I am the quarry.
I creep across the minefield
and receive my consequence.

This waiting room
its blinding lights
intensify my thoughts.
Time has nearly stopped;
your face hangs crooked
on every wall.

My skin
it weighs me to the ground
heavy with anticipation.
Hysteria hovers idly in my mind
finally settling
and I succumb to infinite madness
where I will wait no longer.

I place my doubts even in the hat that proves your existence;
the sun burns out and people change
there is no space for me.

I was in it for the way you looked at him.
This lavender-green sunset will swallow me whole tonight.
My body hurts but I won't break my bones for you tonight.
This summer sickness weighs so heavy, heavy, heavy on my heart.
Your eyes will haunt the monster in me tonight.
This heavy fog will drag me down, will swallow me whole tonight.

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.

Do your lungs feel heavy,
weighed down with sand?
Has it slowed your breathing
nearly to a stop?
And your throat,
is it all cut up?
Those unkind grains of
salt or sand,
are they what has kept you from speaking?

Take a close look at your hands
don't you sense something foreign?
The creases in your palms
or the shapes of your fingernails,
doesn't something seem
...off?

Even your clothes;
they don't fit
like they used to.
How could they, after all?
Your memory is hardly what it used to be.

From the start she had you pinned as the forgetful type.

I propose a toast
to a honeycombed crux
charred black
it wanes but it's no moon.

Molasses streaks the sky
disguised as light
it will not calm the alabaster globes
bobbing in the icebox of her gut.

Stolen
she wanders ghostlike and barren
expectant for the cuckoo's cry
consent to come
unhinged.

An overture in reds and golds -
hardly untruth
the hues bury shame:
eggshell-white and stuffed full of monsters.

Take heed
and never trust the oleander
the fox-eyed traitors
of the flower patch.

These hollow bones
are shaking, shaking;
boundless seas of skeletons
quake beneath my heels.

Fear saturates my skin:
it chokes, it curls
- an inevitable
forced descent into infinity.

I stumble into the cosmos,
crushing me beneath its glory
it's deafening
but suddenly, I am real.

Handprints stain my heart.
They're yours.

I am plagued; comatose,
a ritualistic rebirth
I claw my way out by morning.

Steady, inescapable,
and raw, colorless thoughts
I wake, a hollow shell
a crescent.

Crumbs of my Eden remain
they linger as you linger
burlesque, a temptress
stepping softly.

I'll not let the words crawl across my lips
I'd rather let them form brief, violent hailstorms
than risk it all again.

Wrists heavenward,
breathless, I submit.

The dawn of October
stains my palms
how the nicotine stains your teeth.

The cinnamon leaves
storm about
raking your dusty lashes, like stalks of fruit.

Ocher crumbs and cocoa seeds
besmirch the damp soil,
clumsily.

You are defined with:
pulpy cider hues
my slow, chemical solstice.

A cornflower symphony
hummed by the trees, bare and trembling,
the fruitful pining of their inner bark,
the ****** that lines my pumpkin patch.

I squint at the flaxen sun
that drips golden beyond my shoulder,
where the sinuous maple tree, gnarled branches and all
will breathe your name.

Your body is a coal mine
me, an irrelevant dilettante
I cannot winnow you out like the flame of a match
or peel you from my sole.

Tired eyes
shame envelops her body, like gauze
shoulderblades dripping with chagrin, a tattered pair of wings.
Freckles dot her nose, a miniature map,
sanguine lips on milky skin.
Stale, intangible disgrace.

Her eyes are drawn to the sunken sky,
and puffs of breath dance around her lips.
Acid boils within her
rippling throughout her body, threatening to tear her in two.
Fingers pressed to lips; drag,
a tiny ember. Ash away the agony.

A script, perfectly mastered:
a whimper, a moan, a buck of her hips.
Expectant with dread:
a low grunt, heavy panting, and slick, salty sweat
and at last it comes to a close.

And then: a fistful of bills.
Stiff, unyeilding, she will swallow hard.
And tell herself it was all worthwhile.

There is a hole in her heart,
dimly lit by a frenzy of pale, crushed stars
the smell of their flames: chalky, thick charcoal
whisper a faint reassurance.

Penance stains her cheeks in lacy contours
ageless, crooked bruises lace her body and blister to the surface of her skin
unable to rinse herself of sin,
she will choke on the sun.

Time is spent
unfolded,
melting into itself.
Roots, like an oak,
extend from me,
a tired stretch.
They coil themselves
around you,
catching your skin.
A sluggish act
of self-preservation.

Prose is spent;
each letter fluxes and fuses --
shaping nonsense.
Words hang in the air,
dangle and drop;
my serifs and cross strokes
litter the floor.
They soften,
and you're ankle-deep in verse.

Comfort is spent.
Restless nights ensue,
doubled over in mourning
for nothing;
to rather curl into you,
like a shell
a beautiful,
disastrous fit.

The future is spent
spread before me,
a rich expanse of black.
I feel the desperate longing
for constellations
nothing to name after you
but a slow, dull ache.

I am spent.
Vacuous at last
I've bled dry.
Like dust,
you have absorbed me.
Press on, press on.
And like everything else,
the tar on my lungs
looks suspiciously like you.