praying towards the roof of the mouth, cathedral hallways
you said
on my knees elapsing
towards a response from you
but you’re carving out your tonsils in the kitchen
you said
i said
think of the excuses you left on the floor
roll them at me in between eyes
You can smell it
you said
You can smell it on my mouth
mopping the floor with your sight
it’s frightening
waking to
shattering keys
leaving keys in
locks and bed and shelves and waking to keys in loopholes and
a headache
like the swelling of a wave before
he crashes back in
to himself
back in to the shore line of
his face. his face of uncertainty,
uncertainty quivers
the tip of this wave
into a sea of uncertainty
flinches at outstretched hands
fingers readily echoing the ******* of mothballs under the sink
until the pipes are collapsing
upon the cloud we fell in love under, ripe and ready  to rain
when we thundered, and we did, it was not a
drizzle, a collapse, a clap from the gods but a murmur
but nothing.
"Nothing under this sun could hurt me,” I tell myself
(other than) myself,
With my counting numbers,
counting colors,
counting potassium,
iron,
ounces of water
like
128 is 1
8 ounces in 1 cup
1 oz, maybe one and half, in a shot of:
reflux, knee **** reaction, temporary relief
from scrubbing the sickness from beneath your fingernails
with nothing to gain
but body like a jackknife
but my spine cocked like a gun
a body thinning like winter
changing before my eyes
I realize
I hate things that change instead of falling apart completely
humidity picking scabs from the walls
and the rash on your neck.
brown skin running from the blonde of your hair
I miss untouched spaces on your body
the things that touch you but aren’t me
things that change you but aren’t me
like sea to sky, there is no definite line,
between what is
and was,
the first dream I had of us
fingers tracing fingers and I awoke to life-
a fantasy ever since.

But now,
I am sorry for
lashes that drizzle
their whippings onto your cheeks.
minute counts,
minute wishes wasted
Hammered away at my self
, wrapped in sheets unfurling,
peeling apart form my body like
snakes shedding skin,
the coil of his tonuge like
the coil in a car, burnt.
tar, gas, antifreeze drips from
words. Words.
I always get stuck
on words. a word, the words,
let me return—
While eyes silently ran the maze
of your arm, you tell me
“this is too beautiful to be an accident, katie.”  
but if this is not an accident,
then it is changed,
but not by me.