We cover illness with flowers
and flowers die

The inside of my mouth tastes like it is decaying
I hope I lose all of my teeth first

Maybe its just the scotch and *****
But there is a burning in my throat

Maybe it is Satan just making his way out

There is a deep, rich silence and the bedsheets are as soft as oil.
“What do you think happens when you die?” I ask. “From a purely scientific perspective. Is there any way…?”
Dee rolls his shoulders onto my hands.
“No, Art. I told you. There’s just nothing.”
“But I can’t imagine ‘nothing’.”
“Of course you can. Before you were born – what was there?”
“There was the promise of me.”
“No. There was the risk of you.”
We both laugh.
“There must be something.” I say. “There must be.”
“I hope there’s nothing.” Dee says. “ I can’t think of anything worse than an afterlife. I want peace and quiet. A lifetime is enough. Being alive is such a strange predicament. Knowing everything and knowing nothing.”
I can feel his heart against me. I can feel his heart and smell his skin. I feel us, as we are rocked by the world and breathing together.
And outside is the garden, the wisteria, the white chair, the promise (and the risk) of something, anything, everything, nothing.

You held my hand today
All the way home
And the feeling subsided
Your hand took its place
Your firm grasp
Tore his fingers
From my wrist
And for the moment
I was no longer a slave
To this crushing pressure
Once again
I was safe

When you
Split your time
One leg
Stuck knee deep in the atmosphere
The other foot
Caught in endeavors entirely separate
When you
Live in two different worlds
With only a whisper of overlap
You really are
Not living
In either one
But rather
Just going through the motions
Just eating up time
Existing

Eventually the stretch
Will break you
And you will be left
Laying on the ground
Your body
Ripped straight down the middle

I read his sentence as
a string of his breath,
the commas,
his pauses,
and at the period
is where
he ends.

Why am I the happiest with
your hands around my neck

You have sharp teeth
and you leave indentions in my skin

I want to let you know that its okay
to want to crawl out of your skin

You awake with cracked bones
I chipped my jaw on your frozen over shoulder

I saw you digging in the backyard
Another hole to hide your growing secrets

I wonder when you will stop watering words
And start digging them up by the roots