there’s a sea of people running away from the smoke of their pasts.
they call out the names of their mothers, and ex lovers
they look up at the sky and fear that the moment
they've been waiting for
has happened already.
call me a stranger, it’s okay.
it’s okay to say that the moments are evanescent,
because they are.
but it’s not okay to pretend like
they never happened
because they are here. fading, but here.
i’m here. fading into the blur of people, but i am here.
tell me something.
tell me i’ve been running towards the wrong end
of disaster, or that the world is upside down and
i’m actually walking on the ceiling, and
that years, and years, and years ago,
people used to swim in the sky
and swallow mouthfuls of the galaxy.
wait a moment.
i know it’s been too long,
because i’ve waited for ages to dance in the moonlight,
to go
around and around.
there is no remedy for going in circles.
but to take the straight path would turn
me into a straight-edged square.
i’d rather not become that version of myself,
that person scares me.


/


the night sky is easier to imagine
when
you close your eyes with that classical music playing
in your ears, flannel sheets wrapping your body
in their embrace.
i embrace the lights in the night that are lanterns
floating in the dark conquering it, if only just for
a little while.
they say only light
can conquer the dark
but they never really tell you whether or not
the dark can ever swallow the light
in its mouth of black holes, whirlpools,
and eternal sleep.
the lanterns go out,
and where are we but in the dark,
making ourselves into something
that is almost useless,
but not
pointless.
are you ready now? i ask.
are you ready?


/


your cough syrup throat and my candy corn teeth
are playing hide and seek,
i’d never make you bleed.
the glitter on your eyelids remind me
of a time that was prettier than this one.
the stars would  s  h  i  n  e
and b-l-i-n-k like neon lights,
and they’d carve our names into the bark of the
sky, a memory of the oceans we drowned in
when they stretched between us.
your lispy words, and my groggy voice.
mornings, and skydiving from the chandeliers
into a pool
of deeper thoughts.
i’m caught up in my imagination,
it’s the weights around my ankles
pulling me down
into a more dangerous place
where imagination and reality
collide.
i find asylum in the everyday nonbeliever.


/


hurry on now, my darling, it is getting late.
hurry on now, my lovely, although you can’t run from fate.
these celestialities are all driving me mad.
this celestial city can’t be all that bad.
it can’t be
all that bad.