Human beings are capable of connecting their mouths, taking in
one another’s breaths for up to seventeen minutes
before they lose consciousness from depleting all available oxygen,
filling their lungs with carbon dioxide.

Lately, days have been without sound.
If love isn’t permanent
neither is its absence.
Movement in either direction tastes haunted

I’d have loved you best in reverse.
Led the black tar from your lungs, climbed back up that waterline to massage
the hate from your kidney. Sewn your clothes back on and
glided through that abandoned doorway to a living room
chair that would forever stay white.

Language is a peculiar thing,
when I say the word “tomorrow”, I have always meant you.
A wrinkle slinking across the carpet
when I’m strung out on caffeine and hope,
kitchen knife dotted with who knows whose skins.

Love means something different when all you want
is a bed to die in
and enough change to love a cold plastic cup
dancing through tattooed fingers,
like stained glass in a war zone.

There will be times
you need to go across black waters
heal at your own pace. So I will build the most beautiful boats,
launch you from the docks myself. Strew campfires across the shoreline.
A reminder there will always be a boat
and land to return to.