It is almost five a.m.
With each thump of the echoing bass,
of the synthetic revenge and heartbreak,
angry percussion wraps me closer than your arms ever could--
tremulous and heavy,
more absolute than the sunset fictions
you contentedly let me cling to.
A venomous chorus drips from my lips,
once-swollen eyes now itchy and dry.

This is the still serenity of the predawn slumber,
the yearning of the yetsummer,
the quiet before the birds begin scavenging
through grass, trash, and recycling.
I protest--
tongue, fingers heels teeth and lungs
restless in spite of themselves.

You have chased me out of bed,
across dew-dampened grass,
over uneven pavement as treacherous as your voice.
You follow me.

Sleep is merely a forlorn memory
peering sadly from a forgotten heap of warm cotton thread,
whimpering futilely against the anxious pulsing
of overworked headphones
and overthought peculiarities.

You introduced me to this time of day.
You summoned it once with impatient chords
and a staccato keystroke melody,
casually ignoring the plaintive honesty
I willingly accompanied you with.

But the sunrise casts a strange glow, I guess--
rosy and well-intentioned,
fickle and fleeting, like your grin
or the capricious depth of the summer sky.

No one remembers that wandering blue
the same color as her eyes;
but it seeps through your pores,
curls into the caverns of your chest,
an aching in azure only because you let it.
You have bathed too long in the sun.
As the scarlet sunrise erupts across your shoulders
the sky settles into your lungs.

But don’t trust that sky,
that constant companion.

That sky is a cannibal
and it will eat you alive.