i.
dusk doesn’t feel like an end to me.
gladly, we play hide and seek amongst monuments
made in retrospect, and the sun doesn’t make us
go home until it’s already past dead. we drop
hearts on the unsuspecting, play make-believe in the
style of world war ii documentaries your grandfather
watches on the history channel. winston
churchill played with fire the way we play with
matchsticks and death and dying make
cameos fit for better actors. your rocking horse isn’t
fast enough. nagasaki still stinks of radiation.

ii.
we breathe, virtueless, shoes untied and headaches no
tylenol can hope to amend. there is
money involved, as there usually is, and
bills are exchanged from hand to soulless
hand, stench of cannabis like perfume in the air.
sobriety is elusive–you, effusive–we toast to
ambiguity and *** between stoners and
sinners. The ****** of yesteryear haunt street
corners we use for battleground, though the
fights take flight on rusted wings within the confines of our
heads, vacancy signs flashing in our pupils.
you reek immortal.

iii.
colourlessness is inevitable, but you always liked
noir films. i play you on first base, set myself
against flesh still pink with love bites from december
chill, and your lips tell a better story than
anything in black and white. we consume–we are all that’s
left. we don’t speak english until sunrise and by then we’re
telepathic. i don’t need words to say i love you.

iv.
we part, gasping for breath without sound in
clothes that don’t yet fit us right, doggy paddling because
they don’t actually teach you how to
swim in high school PE. you’re a
cartographer, your hands are
maps, and i am left bereft, grasping at substance too
thick for breath. i stop breathing, then, and
you haven’t held my hand since.