i’ve been dancing on the clouds again,
whispering all my secrets into a dollar bill every night
because i’m too cheap for a twenty
and i know i’m not worth the extra,
but there’s a storm inside
and the clouds keep turning to mist
before i can ever finish a song;

the thunder is an earthquake in my bones
and i can feel them crumbling
every time the snow melts,
turning to ash until i’m too limp to dance anymore,
and the rain is a tsunami in my chest
that keeps tearing through the cage around my heart
every time i remember the flavor of the month
coursing through my veins
and dripping out my nose;
i’ll tell you a secret:
sometimes i even lick my lips.

but the lightning only comes
when i’m thinking of
the way the golden rays of sunlight
peek out from behind the clouds,
and the way the salty tide brushes up
against my fingers in the sand,
and the way the heartbeat of the ocean
engulfs my whole body
while the water clings to the thirst in my skin;

sometimes i bathe my throat
in a harsh bolt of white lightning
before taking a dive in that musky swamp
just to see if it’s the same,
but the bruises on my thighs
still make me wash my hands
until my knuckles bleed;

i finally realized pandora’s box
is the place where hope dies;

so bury me in the graveyard of
all the moans that died those nights,
carve out the epitaph with my own fingernails,
don’t give me a funeral unless it’s storming outside
and the lightning finally strikes me;

maybe one day i’ll stick my fingers
in a power outlet just to know the feeling,
since i know i’ll never be good enough
for the real thing