Apr 28
I.
My full time job is watching sand blow in the wind
but that is normal when you wear cowboy shoes.
I would wear boots like my comrades or spurs
but I walk a mile in your soles instead.
Lead-trodden, of quicksand glory,
walking feels like falling and I grasp onto anything I can.
But you pitched a tent in each grain and
sand is not meant for catching.
Cowboys don’t cry and so I built this plateau filled life
and fold criss-crossed, wrung-out flannels for one.
Fire flies and time dries and I see your face
in every passing cloud and cactus spine.
I am not a real cowboy because I wear shoes
and this life isn’t really mine but still the sand blows.
II.
I don’t know why we can’t just try, because what if I am missing out on the greatest thing to happen in my life? Her words bounce like rocks in my brain and dent each surface they hit but my eyes are as dry as sand, and I am not allowing myself to think anything and so I feel everything.
Why can’t I try.
I want to buy a crab to keep in my pants so that the pinching keeps me awake in this expiring dream. Promise that when you are ready, you will find me. I vow that day to become a cowboy in tennis shoes.
Heat contained salt on lips—
leaving something so good can only hurt sobad.
I keep adding songs to a playlist unlistened to, a time capsule of teleportation that could inject your unused love drug into my brain. Teeth marks t a t t o e d on my collarbone and a r/e/v/o/l/v/e/r in my eardrum call me to the life of caked mud. It all drowns. Horses and spat gum and your name I threw in the river that I wish would bob to the surface.
III.
Tongue on top lip and spicy spider-like showmance,
A web of tastebuds and sticky fingers spool
in 1950s romance film.
Your name is mine in seventy different languages,
In my past life I hated cowboys and
everyone that wasn’t you.
We two step under fluorescent skylights and kiss
in soaking clothes and absorb grass stains on our skin.
Every book ever written is about us and
tonight we are cowboys under the evening strawberry sky.
In every life you nap in my shadow and
God stitches your outline to my silhouette Peter-Pan style,
and I harvest your veins and braid them into mine to make
a cross-hatched blanket I can sit on in the sand.
IV.
I open my mouth to swallow sand and it tastes of rubber and sweat and anything else your tennis shoes may contain. It may be all that's left of you and so instead of necking it down I hold a mouthful in the space between my teeth and tongue and lay myself down on your shadow to sleep.
My full time job is watching sand blow in the wind
but that is normal when you wear cowboy shoes.
I would wear boots like my comrades or spurs
but I walk a mile in your soles instead.
Lead-trodden, of quicksand glory,
walking feels like falling and I grasp onto anything I can.
But you pitched a tent in each grain and
sand is not meant for catching.
Cowboys don’t cry and so I built this plateau filled life
and fold criss-crossed, wrung-out flannels for one.
Fire flies and time dries and I see your face
in every passing cloud and cactus spine.
I am not a real cowboy because I wear shoes
and this life isn’t really mine but still the sand blows.
II.
I don’t know why we can’t just try, because what if I am missing out on the greatest thing to happen in my life? Her words bounce like rocks in my brain and dent each surface they hit but my eyes are as dry as sand, and I am not allowing myself to think anything and so I feel everything.
Why can’t I try.
I want to buy a crab to keep in my pants so that the pinching keeps me awake in this expiring dream. Promise that when you are ready, you will find me. I vow that day to become a cowboy in tennis shoes.
Heat contained salt on lips—
leaving something so good can only hurt sobad.
I keep adding songs to a playlist unlistened to, a time capsule of teleportation that could inject your unused love drug into my brain. Teeth marks t a t t o e d on my collarbone and a r/e/v/o/l/v/e/r in my eardrum call me to the life of caked mud. It all drowns. Horses and spat gum and your name I threw in the river that I wish would bob to the surface.
III.
Tongue on top lip and spicy spider-like showmance,
A web of tastebuds and sticky fingers spool
in 1950s romance film.
Your name is mine in seventy different languages,
In my past life I hated cowboys and
everyone that wasn’t you.
We two step under fluorescent skylights and kiss
in soaking clothes and absorb grass stains on our skin.
Every book ever written is about us and
tonight we are cowboys under the evening strawberry sky.
In every life you nap in my shadow and
God stitches your outline to my silhouette Peter-Pan style,
and I harvest your veins and braid them into mine to make
a cross-hatched blanket I can sit on in the sand.
IV.
I open my mouth to swallow sand and it tastes of rubber and sweat and anything else your tennis shoes may contain. It may be all that's left of you and so instead of necking it down I hold a mouthful in the space between my teeth and tongue and lay myself down on your shadow to sleep.
