Slender fingers bite, holding fire from a gun
She sees the moon linger above the cool waves, blue flames
Trills of music from a box wound into her ethmoid bone
Love songs from another world
Lifeless, icy lips upon her palm, sliding each boot off arched white feet
She looks at them, looking at him, unseeing
Gliding on dancer's legs across the stone, feeling hollow
A shallow, dark crevice in her lungs, slim bones ringing
Clumsy hands unwinding strips of linen from her chest,
Salve binding each lid to its brother, inside there are stars
Bright, unending, singing coarse to the nape of her neck,
A beautiful embrace of salt finding each exposed bit of skin as she slips
The cloth hanging lightly across hips and stomach, the barren, sunken
Stretch of muscle beneath
He reaches, unfinding, dips his tongue across the stuck-out vertebrae across a worn, stretched spine
Stark scars written like poems into her ribs
Barest caress of nail across her illness, lost, within the blue-green waves of the sky
He wraps all she's known into a breath, the call of gulls and the fear
Of twisted sheets
Shaken strength sends her to the window, sewn
Peace willed, token
Slender fingers deft on golden clasps, butterflies hanging neatly
Clavicle to clavicle, intent to fly free
Palms entwined on the swell of the back of her calf,
Drawn out dreams, tongue rested well and full at the bottom of her jaw
Air and ocean stilled, contingent upon the trigger rested
Barrel trained between cool eyes, aside her wan mouth
Warmth flooding from his boiled blood, thrumming against her back
Constellations bleeding across her shoulders, dripping cool
Painting trails into a cruel smile
Slender fingers sting clean flesh, unfettered by the world
She sees the blue flames dance and reaches, long forgetting the gun
Sweet music released, a harmony from each heartbeat
Kisses
And nothing, sweet nothing, save trickling tears