your body is an atlas

I cannot count the hours spent lost in the roads

of the veins on your wrists

and the scars on your knees as lakes pool from you temperate thunderstorms

your shoulders are a forest in which every freckle a tree

that I've kissed and brushed my name through slowly

into your paper thin skin that folded back with loving hands

do you remember that time when the dogs were howling? we watched the sky melt and drip purple. I had dust between my toes and a knot in neck but I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't fix it. I wouldn't want everyone to end up somewhere differently.

sorry about that thing I said that made you cry. I didn't mean it that way. We went camping once and you wore your baby blue shirt for five days. Everything was okay then.

when the boy broke your wrists by covering them with his own
you cried and said it was because he loved you most

if only your tears could wash the blue green purple clots from your neck and shoulders
that you blanketed with your twist pierced fingers

then maybe you wouldn't feel you were a clam in the tide
shrunken closed from the pounding against rocks against demand

when the boy left because you couldn't be kissed without crying (shaking screaming breaking)

you used your flowered hands to fight your own self and tear at your own skin

until your mother kissed your eyelids and you covered yourself up to you ears

until your fingers spread to show the scars

If you didn't leave the tv on at 2 am maybe things would be different.
the window is open just about two thirds and I can feel the brush of his t-shirt on my hip when he's breathing. I fell asleep before he came home and now the cat is humming at his feet. I think I can smell his toothpaste and the way his hair oils when he forgets to shower. He twitches in his sleep sometimes but it's his way of saying that he's happy.

Once we were laying in a field
in the early hours of the morning
with dummies in our beds
without screens in our windows
I think he was crying or maybe I was
I asked him what sadness felt like
he whispered

"hollow, hollow, hollow."