Enter my stasis: hands groping in the dark
Yet cannot grab nor call for help. My fingers

Are meshed by frozen teardrops, my feet do not
Trust the floor below. Such kingdom I have made,

Enough to put their walls to shame. I have everything:
Between the fortune and the fame, I stand. All the world’s

Marvels come here and do not come out. You can check out
Any time you like, a song once said, but you can never leave.

I have everything, but the single thought of you—of not
Having you—has turned them all to ice. I am married

To this arctic cathedral. I sleep beneath the sheets of satin
As cold as the hollow infinite you placed on your lips.

I do not wish to stay, but the wrist is shy at the welcome
Of a blade. At times, I would sling a sentence to the sky

To shake off sunlight from a cloud. But you would come
And tempt me with December’s air. Oh, my sweet despair,

You are the eye in the ice, the sharp drip of a frozen spike
That hangs from my ceiling. Darling, I wish to be unthawed.

A frozen kiss had sealed my lips. I cannot holler for help,
For in the land of the blind, the silent man is lonely.

Wind kisses her hair, then
Her nape would sigh
A soft hello.

Droplets of rain
Running down her skin.
Storms in my eyes, let loose.

This morning, my hand
Caught the first drop of dew.
I think I just held your hand.

When you
Can't sleep
And the night
Feels like
Bitter wax
Slowly dripping
On your morning's tongue

Some nights, I would set sail
To a thousand words on paper,
And one by one, they would get lost
Beneath the rip tides of your skin.

In sentience and in sleep,
Darling, you are only as real
As the last verse I wrote
On the crumpled walls of dusk.

While the world slaughters dreamers,
I watch you, begging the moon
To drop pieces of itself on sea foam.
I am a slave to your every step.

Tucked underneath crystalline sighs,
The stars would come out to put up tents
In the corner of your eyes, their light
Guiding the way for misguided missives.

Moored to your voice, I listen
As you speak in the language of waves,
Your words undulating with my metaphors,
But stirring holocausts for the heartbroken.

But you are here, and the lines between your eyes
Get tangled up with thoughts bred by midnight.
Your hair, your hair, they tessellate and play
With the colors of honey and amber.

Perhaps, if one were to crack you open
The light of a thousand adjectives
Would come seeping out of your skin.
I am but the shadow it will cast.

And in shadows, they whisper
That dreams can get lost
In the vacancies of the night.
Every night, with you
I set sail to my words
To find them
And lure them back.

I dream of Glasgow’s neon glow,
Of splashing lights on trees and snow.

I dream of Stockholm’s wintry air,
The way its snowflakes kiss your hair.

I dream of dinners at Amsterdam:
A glass of Shiraz, some prosciutto ham.

I dream of places, somewhere far
Where sunlight’s kept inside a jar.

Where nights are long and winters reign,
And the cold, cold silence speaks your name.

Speaks your name.

Your name.

Your
Name.