please don’t let me
lose my lips
to open wide
and let it slip

yellowed pages
the tiny crosses
mark the sins
within my pocket

to be weightless
was my cheek
against the cold wet tile
the sound of running water

i am not my body
but a lump of atrophied muscles
a bundle of bones
staring into leagues of watery deep

it was then i knew
that my disorder
was louder than my body
and that all things drown in the end

night after night
she walks into wonderland
under hazy streetlights
to let thorns
shred her delicate petals
now her rosebud, gone forever

her eyes as dark
as the rolling tires
on the highways
that she sells herself on
sell your soul to the devil
he will let you keep the change

drunk on despair
and living on borrowed time
the wolves of yesterday
the dirt under her fingernails
linger like the voices
of the monsters under her bed

creamy thighs spread wide
for an endless audience
to spoon her milky honey
lick their fingers clean
clean of their conscience
the white washed walls

may the prickly blood
of the cold winter
not stain the white walls
or shrivel the leaves
but lead her to the water
and set sail in a teardrop

the gods told me
that while we lay last night
they wound a tiny red ribbon
around our little fingers

a ceaseless pinky promise
stitched into the fabric of our skin
to be tangled and stretched
but never severed

snaking through stars and satellites
for the destined ones
to seek each other
calamity after calamity

tonight our worlds have separated
by time, place and circumstance
but we will meet again
when our shadows find their way out of the dark