I. YOU CAN FEEL IT IN THE ATMOSPHERE, TEARS OF MY PSYCHE FOR YOUR SOL

II. HANDS RISE AS IF IN WORSHIP, LA LUNE SLIDES ON MY TONGUE & DOWN MY THROAT LIKE A TROPICAL JUICE

III. YOU EMBRACE THE STARS, I EMBRACE THE CLOUDS

IV. WE SING AN OFF-KEY MELODY FOR THE MORNING THAT RISES

V. WE SING AN OFF-KEY MELODY FOR THE MORNING THAT WILL NEVER COME

in your arms, i find warmth.
i find 90s grunge band posters and fairy lights entangled on the walls with the scent of burning incense that has been lingering in the air around my nose for quite some time—a sensation of bliss between my cupids bow & chin when the sun touches my swollen lips with her soft & delicate ones—how does one tell the angel of the clouds to bring a storm down?

i find a remedy in our tomorrows
and a home in our forevers.

maybe I’m just out of metaphors.
or maybe you’re just too good for them.

i tried listing the ways i could describe our slow motion romancing, but my tongue is always left with a dry taste on the surface. i tried naming artists that brought me to my knees but they could never compare to how you bring me to them today. no creative suites are worthy to be grazed metaphorically with your name in between the syllables.

maybe i’m trying too hard
or maybe i’m not trying enough.

the glass is half-empty and my phone has been lighting up with missed calls from my muse, where have you been? where did you go? will you come back? i tried ringing my creativity but she left me with dial tones.

i can’t sit here and say i never thought about running away from you. i run away from anyone that gets close enough to brush against my rib cage towards my heart, i never liked the way their hands felt. iced and reeking with their desperation. maybe I’m just too tired of the same old thing, maybe i’m just really stuck on you.

maybe, the metaphors weren’t on the page
but in our yearnings for each other to turn around and taste the eclipse.

you don’t know me anymore
and truthfully you never really did.

you knew the parts i painted with my wrists but never the ones i created with my wretched heart that you repeatedly squeezed too tight and had me clean up the mess.

and if i’m being honest, i never really knew you either.

we both had a fantasized version of each other and what we desired each other to be, only to have reality sink in years later.

i was always five steps ahead while you were taking the fast lane to get further, never fully meeting our destination and mark.

the last time we talked, you apologized for the way you were and that you’ve changed

but if i learned anything from you,
it’s to never trust a wolf with no teeth

because they never know when to stop.

my hands clung to any happiness i could achieve so when you came in swinging, i felt the rush of adrenaline in each and every part of my watery veins—they pumped with yearning and that’s all you ever made of me. a ghost wailing for its own vessel but to only be left hollow in a grave throughout the afterlife brim.

i always screamed too loud at night and i know you learned that you’re the reason why i can’t sleep on my left side for too long. but if it makes one of us feel any better, i cannot drink my coffee with four sugars without remembering how you always did things the same amount of times. never more, never less.

and if it helps you sleep better at night, just know, that i can’t.

my insomnia has been coughing up blood more and more as the days go by. the bedroom gets more suffocating and the comforters have gotten more tight. your name is still the same on my phone but you told me to lose that ages ago. (news flash, wide eyed watercolors never looked good on me.)

we both know the truth of what happened that night but you cannot risk your reputation to save my life.

because after all, only one of us have a soul
and everyone knows it isn’t you.

it was june or july or august
everything i could never say carved itself my esophagus, the words that would never escape – you made sure of that. one hand wound around my throat and the other cradling her blushing cheeks.

she slips away but your grip only tightens.
fingers scraping – my flesh beneath your nails as i learn a new kind of silence. just a little longer, i’m almost gone. trapped like a bug encased in amber but when those wilted wildflower eyes meet mine, you know i’ll always forgive you.

my lips flicker like a flame as i wonder if i’ll slip away too.
of course not & you like that. push on the middle of my windpipe, crack it like a glowstick and watch my lucid acid purge from my throat in neon technicolor – you do it in a way where i’m both alive but running through the afterlife in white gowns & red stained feet

you recite those wendigo apologies while they look in your wildflower eyes, you purge those auto repeat explanations and how it will never happen again – but we both know it will. your testaments are all folklore, but i always keep reading it.

you lick the blood filled sorrows into my skin and i forgive you.
and i always will because daddy always showed that when a man loves a woman, he hits her.