my lungs are made of sunbleached storms
and unfinished poems,
stalled and trapped in a cycle
of kisses under the disco lights
and muddled
phonograph records;
it's been so long
since they last sealed
my comets shut;
its ice, dust,
ammonia, sadness,
now trying to spill
out of my chest
every time i sigh a word.

that's what club music is good for;
they mask the sound
of breaking down;
the sound of
bodies and meteors
falling apart;
each noise drowns out
my unsent letters,
and restroom meltdowns,
and my voice, saying your name
over and over and over again
as i come undone
on a stranger's lap.
he looked almost just like you —
and then he didn't.

and my comets almost all stayed,
but they didn't.

and i was almost just alive —
and then i wasn't.

honey, the world got us all wrong —
brewing *****, noise
and ash-brown eyes
across the floor —
it's happiness until it isn't;
in the end,
we're still comets
melting into solar flares
and forlorn figures
that never make it home.

the music fades.
the glasses fall.
it's 8 am, and we still wake up
to the suntrails of all the things we'd lost.