caked on makeup, lyrical lash lines, clear
thoughts for the first time; trying so hard to type
out the right words to make the world stop spinning ten
times too fast in the wrong direction. can't you see it's making me ill,
the way you casually can't decide and lean
on calves of glass and card towers of achromatizing dust?

I am a kaleidoscope of many other ashes to ashes to dust;
cut across from rib to rib and leeching out the clear
air you breathe. I am perennial, the one to clean
you up when you fail to break the mold and fall back on type-
casted stereotypes of who everyone else thinks you should be. still,
I am the one who doubts and falters, often

has the idea that we are erased and quick forgotten
the moment our idiosyncrasies peter out and dust
replaces bones we came to know. I am shrill,
and I talk too loud at all the wrong times; I can never clear
the plates I stain with blood and pile high with subtype
after subtype derivatives of things I should do and glean

vivification from carefully, anxiously. you have this lean
skin and enviable, insouciant lilt to your walk towards me at ten
o'clock when I can't see straight anymore, can barely type
the last letters of my poems. your eyes are clear
and you're free of that indestructible and obliterating dust
that clogs my lungs and makes me feel so ill

so often. shallow peaks of your shoulder blades, time at a standstill
when I merge into highways of veins and clean
breaks from responsibility, softly tracing jawbones that clear
my head for just a moment; hands that tremble to fasten
the world back onto my hollow aches and faltering nervous system. I dust
off your window sill and think maybe you're the type

that complements an irrational daydreaming messy busy type-
writer kind of lover. you know, the kind that hates to pay the bill
on time because that's another deadline to miss, who lets dust
fly around because vacuums interrupt abstract art and lean
cuisine, who likes cats and very, very often
misplaces her phone somewhere on your clear

floor nothing like the type she has, like the type I have, like the way I lean
toward your infrastructure to hold me still; darling, you brighten
my mornings of habitual stardust and glass not quite clear.