don’t be careful with your care
not with me

loving me isn’t a yellow light
it’s red
you’ll speed through it when you’re out
all alone at four in the morning
too tired to think past your headlight gleam
mindlessly flickering on the high beam
drunk on a sleepless longing dream of me
the only cure you’ve found
that knows how to keep you breathing

i’m not here for take-backs
your filters don’t fit me
i’ve never screamed impermanence
not to you
i am the ghost that seeped into your pillow
you are the most i’ve cried into mine

i don’t want to be a poem you write in pencil
i don’t want anything you say to smudge away
i don’t want to be a rewritten draft
something you shift and modify
until you deem it ready to be realized
i’m not a love that cleanses mistaken graphite lines
off pristine pages
and starts again
that’s not real
that’s not me
i want you

write me in pen
stain my skin with your touch
scribble your thoughts permanently through my brain
etch my lungs with a song, sign my heart and
watch it pump pump pump the dark ink
think and hot through my veins
and when it rains, no matter
let it all run together
every echo of forever
you ever stamped into me
let my skin become a canvas
for your watercolor words