1.

It’s just the sound of breathing all together. Soft. Breathing air and water and blood. Nobody’s worried because nothing has happened. Soft lips gentle and closed eyes pure, untouched, unopened like new shoes. Head alone and empty, waiting to be bruised.

2.

The eyes are open and we’re holding hands. All of us. My quarks against your prose and your ghosts. You’re looking at me like you love me. Not even like you want to **** me. Just like you love me. Like I’m yours. Like I’m somebody’s. We don’t speak. We’re still holding hands with everybody else. On the floor there are broken teeth and ripped out ****** stitches but I’m not looking at them. Neither are you. Neither is anybody else. It’s all soft hands. Hips. Collar bones. Lips.


3.

The heat of your hand against mine. Fusion. You are not a ghost. They are. I am not either. We’re looking down. They’re not. We’re enlightened. They’re not. There is no roof and the teeth and blood aren’t real. They are only reflections of the stars. We do not speak except to each other.

4.

Teeth and stitches and bleeding hands and my blood is in your veins but you’re a closed circuit. I’m getting paler, but I don’t notice, because I am your dialysis, your transfusion. I’ll let you feel for me because I can’t feel my hands. You don’t expect it but you don’t tell me not to. Even if I die you will still hold me upright. My hands bleeding into your hands and open wounds in the wood floor. The glass floor unbroken because the teeth and blood are still just the stars. It’s okay because I know I’m saving you and I know you will save me. Cross stitch my lips so I can’t ruin it. Sew me up like a doll. It’s not your fault.

5.

Condensation into cold hands. Water droplets in their eyes as everyone else comes back again. Turns out I was just ignoring them. My blood in your veins. You’re not holding me up anymore, I’m clinging to your shoulder. Let go. You’re walking away and I’m following you and you don’t ask me to and you don’t wait for me so I step on the teeth beneath my bloodless feet. Even though they are only stars they hurt. Even though I am only a ghost I still run out of breath. Make me your Aphrodite. Yours before anyone else’s. Be mine before your lover’s.

6.

Now it’s all knees and elbows and raw hands on the wooden floor. Your blood my blood everyone else’s blood on my face. You let go of me. My blood in your veins, my cut up hands on the ground. Everyone else has better blood, more heart and less metal, and they all love you. Their blood, their flesh, their threads in your barely broken hands and you’re smiling. I haven’t seen you smile in a long time. I can’t feel my feet or my hands and in my head there is a swirl of stars except now they are only teeth and ripped-out stitches. Cut my face. Leave the stitches in. It’s not my place to speak. Look at me like you love me.

7.

There is blood on the ceiling too and you still think it’s the northern lights. My face is wet with someone else’s blood. Stitches. Teeth. Back and forth rocking on the floor. Cover me in your life. Your blood, my blood, your blood. I have no right to it. Grabbing teeth from the floor with numb hands and chewing them. Swallowing bone. Knock out my teeth and I’ll hold theirs in my mouth instead. I’m licking the blood from the puddles on the floor and dreaming of bullets to find more blood. In rivers, in sheets, drowning me softly. Dreaming of bullets and bullets and metal and blood. There is no more blood in me except in my stomach. Look away. Stab out my eyes. Cut out the stitches and put the metal in my mouth so I can sleep.

8.

I’ll wait among your absent lover’s things, something for you when the rest are gone. My stomach is hot and I’m not hungry. Blood in my lungs and I don’t want to keep breathing it. Dead nerves seizing in my spine. All I smell is blood and I think that’s a sign of brain cancer. Cancerous hands and teeth and bones and eyes. Bullets for the tumors in the grey matter. Metal and blood and skin and nerves and metal. Just one of your absent lover’s things.

9.

I’m too tired. The teeth are stars again. So are the bullets. Metal and bone. Let me eat this galaxy. Watch me.

10.

Teeth and bullets and stars. My empty head and our ****** hands. Teeth and bullets and stars.

I do things in the dark
that nobody would suspect

I do things in the dark
and I speak in a different dialect

I do things in the dark
that I get embarrassed of when it's light outside

I do things in the dark
that I really shouldn't be afraid to hide

What I do in the dark
people normally aren't ashamed of

I only wait until it's dark
because I'm shy and don't know how to play the game

I wait until it's dark
because I'm scared of how things look in the light

I wait until it's dark
because I only know how do things at night

I wait until it's dark
because then I know it's safe to be myself

I wait until it's dark
because I can rearrange the perfect rows on my shelf

I do things when it's dark
that aren't even bad or weird or evil

I only do them when it's dark
because I'm scared and weak, and love is lethal

I only want love when it's dark
because it's when I notice that nobody's around

I only want people around when it's dark
because it's then that I start hearing the friendly and forbidden sounds

I only hear these sounds when it's dark
because my heart screams loudest when it's alone

I only listen to my heart when it's dark
because during the day it's deafened by everyone's moans and groans

I hear everything differently when it's dark
because moans don't sound dreary, they sound steamy and hot

I decipher the sounds when it's dark
because everything is never as it seems; it's just not

And I feel the most alone when it's dark
because at night I realize I'm sleeping alone and that's how it's always going to be

I'm lonely when it's dark
because it's when I realize that I've trapped myself and I'm never going to set myself free

and I do things when it's dark
I think and I scream without making any noise

I do things when it's dark
I wink at all the boys

I’m miscellaneous
In the background
Something you wouldn’t notice
Even if it were gone

Orange shining through the window
We head outside to take a peek
Blue sky's to the North
A dark haze from the South

Small particulates drifting in the air
You reach out, and a piece lands on your hand
It looks like plant matter, only grey
You gently touch it with your free hand

. . . Ash.