her sweatshirt read “little flower blossom”
and her hair resembled a bat orchid; her upper lip
was pierced at each end where she smiled
but why can’t i forgive her for piercing my heart
with her eyes, green like the leaves in summer.

come over and discover me, i’m not as bad as they
say; and sometimes my imagination runs like
lions in the desert at a mile a minute, but now
all i can think about is the fact that your tongue
is touching mine and i’m breathing the air
you’re exhaling and our teeth are clattering
like crash cymbals on the top row of an orchestra
playing beethoven’s fifth opus, never symphonies.
we are music, my dear. your eyes are conductor;
my lips the drummer. you’re allowed to play my
heart like your favorite song.
un pas de plus.
un pas de plus.

the sun is in her smile and
the planes are constant so my
adventure to you is just an
impulse away, dear. my eyes don’t
really twitch in the sunlight, but ****
i swear you have me blind. i think
i’m becoming fond of this lifestyle we set
for ourselves, not the ones our parents told
us at the age of three years ago. time is just
racing and i don’t know whether or not
we’ll win. but i believe in god; he has my mouth
and your voice; he had my mothers brain and
my dad’s stubbornness but this
life isn’t perfect, but i want
you to know that you make it.

there are no amount
of words to describe the life
you put into me.

she swore by her five inch heels
that the city lights ran through her veins.
her mother complained about
how she strutted through the doors smelling
like my neck.
i told my father about the way
she smiles when i call her “my little darling” in
cold hours of 2am when she rolls onto my shoulder.
i told my mother about how she rubs my spine with her paint-brush
fingers, hoping to turn my back into a starry night by
van gogh; she’s my shooting star.
her diaphragm syncs to the bass kick of “wanderlust”
and i think i fell in love with her adventure; it’s
not even the weekend yet.

she asked me about my past and the only thing i could tell her
was that the devil is paying me double to see you smile.

i’m measuring my life out in the amount of

breathes it takes me to say i love you

and i’m becoming fond of the taste of

your tastebuds and i seem to dream too much

and never wake up.

and in my dreams i write novels and i’m 

looking for answers on what to name my chapters.

a few months ago i named chapter seventeen
*
Clarice* because i swore someone was leaving me

clues on where to search next but everything was jumbled

together and mismatched like a pair of parents

who hate each other and argue in the night so that their innocent child does not have to hear a word of what god told them.

lay next to me, sweet angel; stay for the night, i will show

you what a home is like next to the snowfall of december.

in my coat pockets you will find:
a bunch of crumpled up receipts scribbled
with love letters i thought of reciting to you;
a pack of cigarettes that i feel is more
for the artistic sense than the addictive;
a mini-lighter on which i wrote the name
of my favorite rapper; and
a beanie she bought me only a year ago.
i’ve taken you on seventeen dates already in my mind
and i think i can imagine the sound
of your voice when you say
“i love you” and the shape the creases on the
edges of your lips make when you smile
back because i said “i love you too.”
but this is only my imagination and sometimes
that ****** thing just runs wild.

she can’t see the world and her
glasses are a little too big for her eyes
but she knows that god can see her
and she was taught that was all
that ever mattered. so she talked about
god and skinny dipping in the
first week of april. i think she’s been with this boy for a while
and he sees the body her mother curved out of marble.
she talked about inhaling the halos that come
out of her best friend’s mouth and she screams
“**** life” at the top of her lungs when no one is
around but god is with her; she’s in my mind and
i believe that she thinks of me in the darkest hours.