The sleeves are short and tight around your thin arms.
School boy image; slim and delicate.
School is long gone, but you are still so very young;
what with that baby face of yours and all.

A ring- stainless steel, its hard edges giving it a mechanical look- loosely hugs your ring finger. Whenever you flip someone off, it glistens under the sun
and I hope that whoever you're cursing is able to appreciate it too;
the delicate frame of your wrist- small and weak. The nails that you try to keep trimmed but grow too fast and as a result are always a bit longer than you wish they'd be.
The way your fingers fall into position, effortless, never forced.  The way they never bend all the way in despite being perfectly capable of doing so (there is no need to, and this is a reflection of your confidence.). The classic Casio F-91W wristwatch decorating your wrist. Straight out of the 90's-- you are rebellion, teenage rebellion, ****** hair smooth and healthy, polo shirts with popped collars, black skinny jeans torn at the knees.
You sleep somewhere between stupid punk and silent elegance.
A bittersweet drink that burns the throat and wakes the senses.
Somewhere between a drunken, buzzing, neon-lit Miami and a lonely tragedy in the deserts of California.

You are so very you, unapologetically ignorant to the world surrounding you and so very self-aware.
You pick up on details that you say fill your soul- the way the buildings are touched by the sunset's dying light, the patch of fog that settles on a faraway mountain you've never set foot on.
You look at me with eyes that say you understand our exact coordinates in spacetime. That look that is synonymous with the moment a flying arrow begins tearing the flesh.
Your eyes, melancholy, seducing. You speak, the words just barely escaping your throat; but I don't hear them. The universe is silent. Your lips move.

"---- -- --- ----?"

I understand you are asking for some kind of information. I don't know the answer to your words, but I know the answer to your eyes. The answer to many questions you ask, maybe the answer to anything you are able to ask me:
My eyes threaten to shut, almost-closing unevenly, and I say, slowly, in an unlearned language, the sounds a string of milky saliva being pulled out by your tongue:


"---------."

Your name.

because when you look at me, when I see you, there is nothing in the universe. Nothing but all you are, your beauty.
Your hands, your slightly-parted lips, your silver rings, your Casio wristwatch. Your body.
My body.

Our body.

The soft-skinned, smooth, young vessel we share.

Darling boy. You are so beautiful and the world is so *****.
You will never tell them about me, of our time spent in front of the mirror.
They wouldn't understand- it isn't about the contrast between our image and the stupidity of mankind, it's about you.
You, entire.
It's about the moment you raise your hand and the world bows before your image. It's about the distorted voice in your poetry, the voice that is yours. The face that is plastered over everything you create, the face that is yours- made for yourself but offered for all to drink- gullible soup, sugary drug,
secret poison- hidden under a screeching melody.

It's about the cheering crowds that dance as you sing:
"Destruction. War. Chaos."

It's not as shallow as a vain "I am beautiful."
It is something deeper, more translucent, more intangible than any concept that lets itself be understood.
It is a mob of unstoppable energy screaming at you in blind joy when you give out your commands. It is in the voices that cheer:
"Sebastian!
Sebastian!
Sebastian!"


Sebastian.


Schoolboy image, Casio wristwatch.
Your name a page in the bible, moaned in ecstasy.
How beautiful you are, how sweet in your lies, how childish


and how very aware of it all you are.

Perhaps the most striking part of this trauma is how we grow fangs in response to being bitten.
I did not lick my wounds.
I became you.

The lesson I had learned was that I have to allow it.
When it comes, I have to let it rip me apart.
It's a good lesson. I apply it to every pain.

But with this thing in particular, allowing may not
be enough.

I don't know how else to say it anymore.

What do I say? That I want you to **** the pride out of me,
So something in me shatters and I allow, allow
That I want to do the same for you?

That I'll let you hold my mouth open, so you see what I can never seem to say, so you see your name, so you see yourself dripping down my chin?
What do I say-
That nobody was sharp enough to even try, that sharpness is what I've become-
That nobody told me what to do with a blade that is alive.

I'll tell you.
Everything alive knows only to be what it is. To grow, to be more of itself.
The blade that is alive knows only to be sharp. And over the years, only grows sharper.

But if I say it, if I say these things, what will you say?
Angel.
Tell me you can dull me.
You, golden blade.
Tell me you want to.

What has happened to me?
I’ve been acted upon;
brought to my own becoming.
On my knees
before an altar that holds me
and all I have been.
And I’m praying, God, I’m praying,
agape in my own-loving, in my still-shock;
Defenseless to my god and silent.

-
This is the only poem I am allowed to write about you.

I went to a strange store today. Immediately, it smelled like my childhood. It smelled like the stores my mother went to downtown. The snacks in transparent little bags, the keychains, the painkillers, the unmarked items. But this place was different in that it was so big. In the toy section, amongst the many visibly cheaper toys, they had a handful of toys from big brands, just sitting there collecting dust. I found a certain big brand stuffed lion and thought, "This is unreasonably priced but I can't walk out of here without him." So I got that for myself. I'm excited for when he's washed so I can hold him all day, he's very soft.

There was a small hair section. Hair ties, hair brushes, hair things; hair clips. One of them caught my eye. In a white, slightly bent square piece of cardboard- mostly unmarked save for a tiny, tiny logo that said "Melody"- was a hair clip in the shape of a flower. I thought it was so pretty. I instantly thought of you, I'm not sure why. It was beige, and soft to the touch. I noticed there were other colors. I picked up a red one and looked at the beige one. Obviously the red one, right? And with a little bit of hesitation I put back the beige flower, the first one I'd seen. I always do that. I feel so sad picking a different one, slowly setting down the first one I'd picked up and held in my hand. It feels like abandoning someone you love.

For when I see her, I thought. For if I ever see her.
-

I WANT TO SAY IT ALL.

I AM NOT CAPABLE OF SAYING EVEN HALF; MY BRAIN IS WRONG, THESE PILLS ARE WRONG, I'M WRONG.

I AM YOUR LANGUAGE'S STUDENT, YOUR UNDERSTANDING IS A SHINY NEW CHRISTMAS PRESENT I'VE YET TO UNWRAP.

I DON'T GET ******* ANY OF IT NOW, AND I WON'T FOR A WHILE BECAUSE I'M NEW HERE, MY NAME IS CIEL.

MY NAME TAG IS UPSIDEDOWN AND MY SHIRT HAS JUICE STAINS, I GOT HERE LATE AND I'M TRYING SO HARD TO EXIST, THE OUTLINE OF MY BODY BLURS.

THE COLORS IN MY SKIN POUR DOWN THE FRAME, THE PAINT BLEEDS OUT, I'M BARELY HUMAN SHAPE, BUT I TRY.

MY BRAIN TRIES TO KEEP THE IMAGES FUZZY WHILE I TRY TO FOCUS.
YOUR KNOWLEDGE DANCES IN YOUR TONGUE, YOUR KNOWLEDGE CRASHES IN MINE.

IT'S DIFFICULT FOR ME BECAUSE I AM A SMALL BROKEN ALIEN WITH THE WILL POWER OF A GOD AND IT'S SO MUCH EASIER FOR YOU,
THIS FRUSTRATES ME.

Who?

Who would come lay their hand on me
in the thickness of my confusion;
The thickness of my Love.

Will you offer your Hand to me
in my fog
And when home is lost to me
Will you tell me where it is?

Will you salt the wound that needs to sting before
it begins to heal,
Will you salt my wounds for me?

O mystery; Who will you be?
Will you Taste me and spit me out,
for fear of keeping a lukewarm thing in your mouth,
Your mouth, Steady with change.

Will you know I too am steady with change,
Will you know I too am an eager student?
Will you keep me in your mouth,
the days I am not burning and delicious?

Will you forget me
Will you let go of my hand
And forget me in the fog

I’m always grasping. Trying to retain some form. Painfully and desperately, I try to keep it, shape it, define it into permanence.

This longing for certainty, this anxiety and desire to be— like the statues unmoving, named and certain— to be something I know, forever, and ever and ever.

But our splendor is in our changing, in our ever shifting consciousness. The heart floods and becomes empty again. The breeze of autumn. The hot of summer. My blood on the rocks. The wound tender in infection. The scar I touch like a feather.

We are made in God’s knowing of ephemera, ever changing, ever fleeting. Undefined, and ephemeral forever, ever and ever.

November 10.
The cold bites me. The setting sun kisses me.
I read your letter aloud and did not let myself cry.
Quiet. Today is quiet.

*— L, from the journal “Winter And Its Waking Breath”

Sometimes you scream and images of faceless faces plague your mind.

Consider not feeling fear,
cut the face open,
dye yours in the face's blood.
Ignore empathy.
Become apathetic.
Die.



Okay now take these antipsychotics.

Esto es lo que siento. Esto es lo que siento. El porqué lo puedo sentir y no decir no lo sé. No entiendo y si pido explicación, sé que se me enterrarán las espinas, las espinas de esa flor— su aroma dulce, sus pétalos en la oscuridad.
Oh, que mucho arde el vino cuando no sabemos qué es.

Prismatic Understanding:

The discovery of information the object being observed does not directly provide.

“I’ve only seen her, Charles. Like a shooting star, I’ve only seen her. But I’d be a king amongst kings to subject myself to that arduous task— of knowing her, and letting her know me. So that we could, some day, and only if she too desires me, arrive at the gates of love.”

“And what about doing that would make you a king, Laurence?”

“Oh don’t you know, Charles? The wait to reach her is as golden as any king’s riches,”

And here, he turns to look at him and smiling, baring teeth and pride, tells his dear friend,

“and would make me twice richer.”





.

My eyes are painted red. Hearts over both of them, dripping into my mouth after some frantic, vicious event with you. How I long for this again, my fierce lover, how I long to **** with you again.

I put my voice under a light not knowing that it would burn to a crisp, and all you would hear would be the weakening growls of an animal refusing to die. I thought I had to speak to exist, when all one should ever have to do is be.

Has it ever happened to you that
Have you ever felt like living was not enough.?
Like you craved something so rich and true that existence felt like it paled in comparison?
That’s how I want.

I think I feel desire the way gods do.

I want completely. I want to wrap my tongue around yours. I want to reach inside you and kiss your beating heart. I want to be able to look at you and see the things behind your eyes and hold the hand inside your hand.
I want you to **** me as foreplay.

Do you th
Do you think gods want like this?
Do I want to be consumed the way a god does?
Bored with existence. Needing the light behind the light.
I want to forget my name when you **** me.
I want nothing but us to exist.

I want us to take turns killing each other.
I want the ecstasy of death. What replaces that? What could replace that?
What will I do if I can’t have it?
I’ll throw another fit, and sit on the edge of the bed with my leg bouncing, again, like I have so many times before. Before. Before you.

I don’t think there’s a cure.

I want to ask someone,
“Will you love me, even like this?”

I want to hear them say yes. I want to then say,
“And when I finally open my heart, and all I can offer you are the broken things inside it, will you love me then?”

I want to hear them say,
“How could I refuse the love you give me?”

I want to hear them say,
“The love you give me is good. No matter the wounds your heart carries, no matter the state it’s in, the love you give me is good. All your love is good.”

I have the force of -possibly- an entire universe
waving it’s hands from a distance
calling out my name
throwing hints and signs
telling me that
I am to think about to future now.

Someone out there wants to let me know
that I have a future, and nothing to be afraid of.

Someone out there
wants me to push on.

Someone out there is sending amazing people
to tell me how they have a passion for everything I am interested in.
Someone out there is making me see that there will be a future me;
an older version of me

who could very well be
everything I strive to be.

Someone out there believes in me.

I don’t know who you are, but I don’t want to let you down.
I promise to not ignore your signs.
I promise to try.
You hear me?

I promise I will try!!

August cools us down. It brings us back from the lazy chaos, the dreamy haze of high summer. It asks us to lay down our learned lessons. Look at them carefully and gently. What has the heat shown you? What does your softened heart now know?

You're behind me, aren't you?
Behind my weak form, behind this place, behind the years.

Yet you strangle me!

...

How do you do that?

How can all of you...

...

There's so many of you, is the thing.
There's you, and you, and you; amongst so many others.
It's... haha, it's really something.

You know,
whenever my friend's arm brushes against mine, I pull back in disgust.  An internal "Christ don't touch me" screeches and stops as suddenly as it forms.

I bear my fangs and my wrists tense, ready to claw at eyes who have no business watching me, before I catch myself
and step away.

And when said friend's tactlessness pulls them away from their intuition and keeps them preoccupied with their own feelings, I hear all of your voices at once.
"My needs first. My needs first."

And I wonder-
would the fangs have grown anyways
would the claws have grown anyways
would I had been this anyways
if none of you would have given me a reason to.

...

No, no.
Surely not.

...

Of course not.









*Of course not.

-


It's always raining.

The cafes are home to neon lights that reflect on the wet concrete.
Brick roads, painted with the tears of God.

I don't cry anymore.

I walk the streets, the night breeze whispering memories of you into my hair.
I don't want to remember. Not like that.
It's like your breath turned as cold as your hands,
you used to breathe into me the same way.
Maybe it's you.
Maybe you turned into the night.

When I wash my hands, the memories pile up in my throat and it hurts me.
You loved holding hands.
I would sneak into your room
through the window.
The air was cold and the night was not you, not yet.
No, the night was me,
bringing with me the breeze and the moon and only the brightest stars all wrapped in my love for you.
Your bed was a nest where angels survived 'till their wings grew big enough to fly.
Your room was God's paradise and you were Lucifer,
hiding from your creators in a corner of a place we made heaven.
The sheets- embedded in your scent- were sacred;

if there are gardens in heaven, the flowers smell of you.

I still worship you.
I do so quietly, praying into the city with my heavy steps.
I sigh and hear your voice tangled in my breath.
Long aimless trips that always take me to your favorite cafe.
The madeleines I taught you to have with coffee.
And there I sit, the cat meows and paws at my lap.
I can't pet the thing, for she too is a memory of you.
The same river of fur that came to greet us that night.
She nuzzles my shoe
and I drink whatever I bought.

It rains often these days.
The cafe home to neon lights that reflect on the wet concrete.
Brick roads, painted with the tears of God.
I don't cry anymore.
I stopped crying when I realized our love was not going to bring you back.

The taste of my whatever-it-is-tonight drink is my only reminder that yes,
this is a different night than the last.
It's all the same. The cat. The scent of god's blood, trapped in rainfall decorating the surface.
The other night, I bought that-other-drink, two nights before it was the sweet-albeit-with-a-bitter-aftertaste one.
These are my days.  I'll begin properly naming them soon;
Perhaps friday will become too-sweet-coffee or late-nite-kir.
Vanilla-wood-whiskey.
Carmel-scented-lies (this too would be whiskey).
Citrus-******-*****-of-a-cake.

I'm sorry. I always hated that cake.
You'd feed me a morsel of the thing every time you ordered it. You found my reaction amusing-- "How could you not like it?" you'd say, laughing. You never expected an answer.
You were so beautiful.

How could you leave me?

You left me with the cat and the citrus-y hell bouncing on my tongue,
bouncing like the I-love-yous I still have to shower you with,
bouncing like the leg that won't stop, its barely-contained urge to kick the animal and the coffee and the chair and the-

I don't cry anymore.

I'm done with the drink. I don't remember the taste.
There is some left, sitting at the bottom, almost whining at me. I leave it.
You are all there is, Guillaume.
You are in the cat's fur,  in not-quite-finished drinks, in the breaths I take to fill my lungs in some act of determination to stay alive despite there not being any reason to anymore.

Goodbye, Miss Cat. I'm heading to the bridge.
Why? No reason. The breeze is always stronger there (though this is merely an observation.).
My sighs and your voice, the night that is your soul breathing into my hair, caressing my neck and curling it's fingers around it, like you did those nights in your room. You really loved playing with my hair.

"I love you more though."

'I love you more.'
You loved me more than anything we knew existed.
And that's the thing, my darling angel, ******* star of my entire universe,

(The night, it pushes me back as I step outside of the railings, frantic attempts to keep me alive. You’ve begun to panic)

You loved me, but I still feel that wretched monster,
that thing that just won't let go of what remains of our heart, the hands of grief that anchor me to the wet concrete, the chains that don't let me go anywhere too far from the cafe and my room.
The chains that fall short of giving me the freedom to explore your room, our heaven.

The breeze has never been this strong.
Are you crying? Are you pounding your fists on an invisible surface, screaming at me from behind some divine glass wall that divides us?

"I know you're there." I say.
You're so close, yet so very far.
What a terrible cliche to die to.

My arms hook on the railings behind me, your whispers turning into a loud, cold wind no longer caressing my skin but cutting it-- this is how you scream now.
This is how you speak to me.
This is how you tell me to stay.

"No." I respond.
I'm not going to stay, Guillaume. I am not going to stay here any longer.
Nothing is going to bring you back.

I don't cry anymore.

I can't... continue this way.

I don't cry anymore.

I am young and I am in pain.
I'm bitter and angry at the universe for taking you. I hate Paris. I hate God. I hate the cat. I hate myself for feeling anger.
I hate that I cannot grieve properly. I hate that what we had was so great, it did not fit in this universe.
Maybe that's why you were taken from me, all in the name of order, balance.
But it's still too much. I don't fit in the world anymore. I don't want to fit.

Stop screaming, Guillaume. Stop begging. I won't listen. You know how stubborn I can be.

"Just try it! God, you're so stubborn."

You know I'll try anything for you, no matter how bitter the aftertaste.


I tried, I really did.


My fingers become weak as I begin to let go.
You hold your breath and it all goes so quiet.
The sound of fingers slipping off of the metal is all I hear,
death is so quiet, I think to myself
and fall.

I feel you cradle me, the air strangely warm now.
How warm must your breath be, how great your love, to alter the order of the universe so.

How slow the fall. How warm your embrace.

I'm not sorry. I love you and this is how I will show it to you.
If I cannot be with you, then I simply cannot be.

You know how stubborn I am.



I love you, Guillaume.










I love y-














. . .













*Float away, dear Thomas. Float ‘till you reach me.

With every word, with every misguidance
This sharp, unbearable thing that digs into the center of me.

This sweetness that I salt ‘till it is nothing but undrinkable sea water.

This love wrapped in the ribbons of Death; almighty Death-

The end of human connection.

When I finally meet you,
I don’t want to take
a single thing from you.
I will give you the child in me,
the fearful, the dark, the dulled fang–
I will give you the thing
deep in the darkest trench of me,
but only if you allow me to.

Only if you say ‘yes’–
‘yes, you may kiss my cheek’,
and only if you say so
with my smile in your mouth.

I only hope
I won’t be too nervous
once I look you
in
  your golden,
            child
                eye.


—And If We Meet from *Ways To Love A Stranger (2017), L

I am no one when I speak. I am only me when I am silent. I am only me when I cry my words into paper. Let me speak to you in this way, so that you know me, so that you see me! Why is it so ludicrous a thing, to sing my thoughts to the world, to speak in poetry to you? Would you let me? Would you let me? Oh, Would you prefer it?



.

The compass inside me has always been fragile, broken. Do you know what happens to a child with no direction? They wear your face. I knew the grownups didn’t love me the way I was. I’ve never been loved. Not when I wore my own face.

I have a fire in my heart. When I was a child, I was handed a bucket of water. “Pour it.” they told me. I knew what this meant. “No” I said. And I was overpowered, and it was sudden, and no part of me was left dry. They taught me to extinguish myself, and today I still grab the bucket, and when I bring it to my hot, fiery heart, my eyes still widen.