we danced around each other all night long

mamboing and tripping in circles,
taking bites out of each other’s throats

metallic, malleable, ready
we mingled like fire on skin

you whisper of your woodworking days and
I could see you now:
new shavings flittering off the palms
those stronghold hands
dust carelessly pooling around your collar
holding finished product to light

I wish to step into this scene,
to carve breast into back and
hold the beatings of your chest
as your lips
brush mine with color

I strain awake.

If I’d happened to be someone else
weaning myself dry from my silent spell
may have taken months
waiting for words to
find me again

"It was just a touch"

Find me again
here
drowned in this skin
I used to know before you
chose to
burrow under

Fingers seeping into soil and rooting in
Once
a friend explained her process of
extracting similar roots
like foreign veins
we'd grown accustom to this

The same friend that
smokes herself to sleep in fear
those roots will find her again

By mere sense she learned the mold of mace and
how to wear her Woman in a public space
She demonstrated proper use as
finger wavered trigger--

If I’d happened to be someone else
reconciling air in my lungs
may have taken years

counting up hours into days
buried in a mangled garden of
thoughts
lingering

Nights spent spinning back clock hands--

I mistook unwelcome hands with the gentle brush of a petal

but luckily

orchids grow
and heal
on their own

Luckily I was not someone else--

Someone so used to gardening open wounds that
trauma festers like a patch of weeds
wild and
unforgiving and
when the soil has dried and
sun has silenced into night
the only remedy is to
uproot the vein

If I'd happened to be
someone else

--
c

I find its presence all but inconspicuous
looming growing phasing
into a full crescent

finding me there

stretch out my legs, wipe away old sweat
shallow on my back
I recoil

--
c

In Morning

I found recluse in the

Skin between your fingers

And the sweetness of your breath

Your touch like heavy wind

Meeting wave with rock

Now

Night

--
c

I hope one day to be read
by a scholar
the careful counting of my lines
calculating their cadence upon some parchment,
it matters not

I hope one day to be read
by a child
swirled spirals capturing the margins as
she rewrites her own story over the words to match
the colors and dragons in her head

I hope one day to be read or
written on the back of some hand
a wishful keepsake for a day
inspiring some great thoughts
or little ones, at least–Perhaps!

Perhaps
I’ll never be read
by some insightful stranger or
inspire grandiosity at all

instead
conserve unspoken words
by ink to paper

--
c

There were a pittance of days she did things for herself.

She liked the way an orange could be peeled to its barest form, made each peel a journey to something.

She enjoyed knit sweaters pulled past her knuckles while barreling through wisping city winds.

She found much joy in closing her eyes among a crowd of strangers.

The mounted sky sheds opens above her. What a pleasure it would be to see and feel all at once.

These were human moments. Like the ones you read about in those poem books, those romance novels, those 500-paged atlases. They sat shallow and sweet in the valley of her tongue, a pinch of raw sugar.

She recoils as the taste fleets swiftly, melted away like each moment before last.

--
c