Her eyes are sinkholes in a quiet, sleeping state
and I was a girl, lost and misplaced at twenty-one,
looking for love in infinitesimal spaces:

on her palm creases and chipped, ruby nails,
and in the blown-out ends of her lotus tattoo
I find myself tracing a secret,
at the spiked tips of her hair tamed by fairy lights
and on the slits of her skin — a rabbit hole of wonders,
I always fall like Alice in sworn careful tiptoes
and crash headfirst; a broken wishbone, a tainted wish
some habits you just can't quit.
like —
October and her obsidian eyes, and the sunless ways we kissed —
being lost and misplaced made sense for a while in the detached comfort
of her cold bed, colder hands,
warmth has become an oppression.

But this dalliance has always been a disaster waiting to happen
and I am a paramour, a memory, a face in the crowd
swallowed in a seismic fall —

and losing October has always been a disaster waiting to happen —
this bed, always a site of a losing battle
and I find myself in a soiled, torn dress,
lying helpless on the other side of her war.

Tonight, I light myself a candle;
maybe one day, I'll finally learn to run away from a girl made of disasters

and not towards her.