The sky is cracked in half,
Moonlight resting on the edge of the oncoming clouds,
A front of dark being called forth by the pull of the moon.

My heart sits in two, part resting with you
In our bed, part here in my chest,
Aching to be whole. Instead, it is pulled apart
By the rising dark, currents flowing in endless
Circles around pretty stars,
Little pinpoints of light determine my grounding but call me from the earth ; they hold me prisoner with promises of hope and worth.
I'm captive as I'm hurdled towards you,
Trying desperately to find a foothold or a catch, but lost
In the promises of your smile, the lines lit by the coming night, and the corners pulled up by the moon.

Give me your skin
That I may take on the burdens you bear by the tone of your flesh.

Give me your wrinkles carved deep into chasms, the evidence of a life lived long and distant from my own, and let me know the feeling of smoothing them out, the feeling of wrinkling them further.

Give me your hue, and pass
The very thing that makes us unique as a flower is passed
From a hillside to a forest by the shambling of a bee, and let me dwell among the cells of your body jail.

My forehead meets your shoulder, and I will my consciousness to meet yours in a crossing, wish that you might feel the strength of my resolve, the surety others cannot know because they do not live in my skin.

Sounds perfect the moment, my breathing steadied by wishing, your heart beating, the tension of being separated by bodies a force in the room that tempts challenging like facing an impassable mountain range.

Give me your skin and fold me into you, keep me honed and edged in the sheath of you, or I will rust in the air with this space between us.

I knew it wouldn't end in fire;
We burned
Too fast, too enjoyably, to suffocate
In flames.

I found the scab, the source,
Small and round and secret.
Incapable of leaving it to heal, I finger the edges
Nervously until the blood flows
Cold and jealous and foreign and unforgiving and slow.

A tipping point we can't reverse out of,
We're frozen on the event horizon,
Empty like the air in February,
The oxygen burned out from our explosion.

I am only left with regret and this
Sense, clear and dry and freezing, that I've walked
Too far north and lost the sun,
Though clouds still part in the distance and wave
Toward the open spaces
With fingers unfurling in unnatural curls.

I claw back to calm from
Calamity and speak, knowing I have listened
Too deeply to words meant for other ears - words that do not tell
Me what to say in return - I am raw.

I stand at the edge of mercy,
Abrupt in my humanity,
Suddenly losing feeling in my toes.

I am a sunflower.
I turn my yellow
and black face,
bruised, to the sun,
hoping its light will
heal me.
With my eyes closed
I can see my stamen,
veins in my eyelids,
bulbous
where they intersect.
The sun feeds me
and I, grateful,
pour myself into
the air. I am
sweet;
I am a bowl
of candy, I live
on your tongue
and I suffocate under
your eyelids.

If you're the blanket then I'm the stitches,
If you're the needle then I'm the mittens,
If you're the water then I'm the kettle
And if you're the rash then I'm the nettle.

If I'm the icing on the cake
Then you're the blow, the burn, the break.
If I'm the claws of a neighbour's cat
Then you're the nose of each dead rat.
If I'm the clock on the microwave
Then you're the cancer and the grave
And if I'm a schemer's dossier
Then you're the board on which he plays.

If you're the hair pulled at hysterically
Then I'm the teacher steeped in austerity.
If you're the cuff that's come unrolled
Then I'm the base camp unpatrolled.
If you're the tea leaves left behind
Then I'm the fortune undivined
And if you're the reason I'm capricious
Then I'm the reason you're pernicious.

If I'm the strap, love, you're the sandal,
And if I'm the drugs then you're the scandal.
If you're goodbye, love, I'm the foyer,
And if I am "je" then you're "tutoyer".