Meet me at dusk by the shore
Through lips dripping in salt water
We will whisper wet words
You can try and break the surface
I can try and glisten blurred eyes
We can sway against white waves
Or rock against darkening stone
Before the sky grows and you
Take me back to your grey cave
Where I’ll come staggering and pulling
The seaweed from my body
And you brush the sand from your eyelashes
We can swim
You can wash me slowly
In that rhythmic salinity
I can gasp for air
But I hope you will drown me
So we can wash up for the dawn
I will meet you where you leave me
On the shore

There's an alteration here
The lights soften
They reach out to touch themselves
Paper covers rock
Concepts always just collected in the spaces
That actions
and words found between warm breaths
had already etched
I thought I knew but I didn't

The sun was too bright
The air too wet
I wandered too far
And so desolation went unnoticed
Until the first dark flash
Until thunder startled frosted eyes
The path has gone and the rain is coming
I thought I knew but I didn't

Perfect apple, perfect day
Perfect fit to perfunctory palm
The shine is shared with blinded gaze
The blood doesn't rub off until the bite
I couldn't see stains in my stubborn smile
I couldn't see the trees for the wood
I couldn't see the moss for the furniture  
I thought I knew but I didn't

I was occupied
Neatly cutting up the patches
Arranging them, so they might work
Weaving a display of correctness
Shearing this covering
Trimming the edges, neatening the detail  
Rock smashes scissors
Patches don't work
I thought I knew but I didn't

The crack in the windscreen was deafening
There's rope burns in our hands
Discarded skins and shells hang between the floorboards
Breastplates can splinter
We thought we knew but we didn't

I gasped but only your voice went in
After the lies I'd told like magic
Emptied themselves as marbles
On the hard wooden floor
I collected myself
With my hands
Dropping the hope
I had been holding on to
Ambiguity ripped open
A line between my heart and chin
I gasped and only the truth went in

I still can't give away
my heart without my pride

You used your strength
And your arms
To destroy the final space
That fell between you
And me

And in a depth of my chest
It felt like a sheet of snow
Had slipped over a roof edge
And silently fallen
On snow below

Look at me
Smile
Affirm me

****

I disgust myself

Come into my arms
I’m stronger than I look
I’ll keep you safe
Hold your frame
Mutter incompletes into your hair
And when the time comes
The falling of the ceiling
Or the raining of the flames
I’ll cover you in me
Weave my fingers into yours
Press my heart into your veins
Come into my arms
I’ll keep you safe

Keep your little light on
He flees a fickle Titan
Of heat
and might
and deep creeping fights on
Heaped upon rights and
Steeped too long wrongs

With half breaths
and a fast head
He shall come doubting, red
And, in mounting your bed
He needs to see your light on
To keep the feeling of right from
Speaking to those bygones
That thieve a man's head's spread
Until it's devoid
Of a position, avoiding
Decision
on pointing
Wrong from right
To stop
To not, become sights of
Long nights of
Young despite
Or grave delight

And you warrant respite
And more deft addresses
Than torrents of best guesses
from some boring, left messes

Out of the dark and into my dreams
Through the haze, not quite as it seems
Out of the dark and into the depth
Candidness abandoned, and honesty kept

Out of the end and into the dark
Bottomless as oceans, still as this heart
Out of lit tunnels, into that dark
I left myself at the gateway, ineluctably apart

Out of myself and into the air
Insides roaming, body spare