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Riley Jan 2014
I'm pacing the dusk dark
Of my backyard,
Feet sinking in the
Winter-softened ground.
One headphone in,
Singing to me of summers
I never experienced,
Ignoring the sirens
The next street over;
Stanching the fire,
Calming the blaze.
I glare at the blossom-less
Magnolia tree;
The absence of the flowers
Screams yours too loud
In the forced quiet.
Strip me from your branches
Like winds ripping
Away
The rotting white petals
Clinging to life.
Does my scent cling,
To your clothes,
Your skin,
Your lips?
Or does it leave,
Rippling off you
In
Curling
Smoke
Blossoms.
Did you know
That the heat of
Your finger tips
Leaves cigarette burn scars,
Coiling galaxy spirals on
The small of my back,
Pressed against
The spaces of my ribs.
On my autopsy they will discover
Marks from your lips
Seared into my bones;
My knuckles,
My neck,
The curve of my shoulders,
The sharpness on my collar bones.


k.f.
Riley Dec 2013
Her prayers are
Breathy I love you's,
Warm and pained against your skin.
Your body is her altar,
Her temple,
The cathedral surrounding her
In her heartbroken worship
As she unravels,
Crying,
Shaking,
Clinging to you with
Everything
She
Has
Left.
The shattered pieces
Of her heart are the broken winged swallows,
Flocking in fluttering storms
In your bell tower,
Nesting in your rafters
Alongside the owls you've let be
To this point,
Content to allow them to roost.
Her hands are your bibles,
The creases telling a thousand stories
Of the girl who weathers the fiercest storms,
But falls apart at the seams
For love of you.
Your laughter serves as her hymns,
Ringing through the expanse of you,
Singing in her ears.
Sometimes she tries
Laughing alongside you,
But her voice cracks
Like an untuned piano
Whenever she opens her lips
To add her laughter to
Your songbooks.
You each find a different kind of heaven
In the stained glass windows
Of the other's eyes.
Hers are the ocean,
Deep and stormy,
Only ever calm
Just before lightning shakes her frame,
Rain and froth
Pounding
Against the glass,
Breaking it's way through,
Trying to flood your halls
As the tempest carves new legends
In her outstretched hands;
New biblical stories to lose yourself in.
She finds summer nights in your gaze,
Bonfires dappling damp grass,
And a boy
Laying on the hood of a run down car,
Staring too intently at the stars
To truly register their fragility,
Their mortality,
Even as they plummet from the sky,
Bursts of white light
Reflecting gold through green glass.
The comet-light ripples,
Climbing to the rafters,
Startling the owls from their perches,
And you can feel them thrumming,
Beating their wings against the ceiling of your ribs.


k. f.
Fell asleep in a hoodie that isn't mine and The Front Bottoms on shuffle. I woke up with this. Dedicated to my brushfire boy.
Riley Dec 2013
You come to me at night
Crying and slick with the cold sweat of a new nightmare.
I hold you in my arms as best I can;
Your head pressed in the space just below my collarbone,
My chin resting in the tangled mess of your bed-head.
But it's too real and too perfect to be anything but fiction
And when you lift your head to pull away
Your cheeks and eyes have sunken,
The promise of a skeleton's smile dances on your thinned lips.
My bones become ice,
As I wait patiently and petrified
To wake up to empty sheets and cold floors
Even as you stare at me with somber puppy eyes,
Still ringed with red despite the glowing shadows that are becoming your face


k.f.

— The End —