if our souls touch,
the sun collapses

between us

and light beams
crash down our throats
like victorian chandeliers.

we’re drowning,
drowning
in lemon-thick shells
that are
too inaudible to break.

you never taught me
how to swim
and now i can’t brea–

precariously balanced, these glass shards are.
little pebbles mingle in her hands, forming
a little hill of something that used to be big
and beautiful. the artist, she will keep holding
on until her fingers break and her heart stops.
so she prepares to put the past back together.

breath shaky, she knows that beauty has a price.
so she cancels her weekend plans, give up on
finally cleaning her cluttered room, dons her
work clothes, and begins a project anew.

the artist’s fingers are not trembling, but
her resolve is. there is great pressure; to
be god one must create something out
of nothing. to be an artist, one must create
something beautiful out of a mess. she
does not want to be god, but glass is harder
to piece back together than it is to make.
and she cannot hold it together anymore.

they fall to the floor, the artist and her
failed masterpiece. glass makes a pretty
sound when it breaks, and so does her heart.
a pretty little ****** that resounds in
the floorboards, that travels to the neighbours
and makes them smile because something
almost beautiful but not quite is happening.

beauty has it’s price.
but this artist is too poor to pay in full.

stagnant nights and i peer into the sky
contemplating the planets that sail round
and round on riverboats in their titian-streaked
skin. and i bet their bone structures have
collapsed by now as they breathe aside the
sun, but they know they need to spin and spin
because they are the only ones left untouchable
in this world.

and i’m glad there’s something to
look up to because sometimes my fingertips
reach to grasp the orbs, stretch to feel some
sort of purity adorning my dirtied soul and i lift
my face skyward to let my eyes drink the same
silver water the planets glide across.

sometimes
i dream that i can feel the stars settling on the
corners of my eyes and ebony night quietly
exploding between my bones until when i
awaken beneath the streetlights i swear i
can feel the night slip like liquid sand between
my fingertips.

god i need you, i need you, because
only when the moon enlightens my palms can
i see the maps pressed to my skin, and without
the stars draping light across my cheeks, a
sleepy black curls around my ankles and i
do not know where to go.

and i guess i’m made of naked ocean eyes and
stark marrow, pale in comparison to your
lovely sinews, but that’s why i need you. i need
you to break through my windowsill each
sundown and play my skin like an instrument,
spill sonatas through each corner of the world
because with you alive and with me breathing
and laughing i will feel
whole.

crinkled love notes litter the battlefield that had
spread between us. and we are nothing now,
nothing but ashes and stone. you spoke in a
whisper too slurred to decipher and i swallowed
words too ridiculous to comprehend. and
papercuts line my throat from the nights i consumed
all your lies, like a child riding some sick, suicidal
carousel. and as it turns out, i’m delusional. lost
and oh so terrified of the dark because there
are ghosts, and they whisper to me, telling
tales of lost boys with beautiful eyes and
heavy smiles who want to be found (just once
more.) and i know there were faults and there
were breaks. but i swear we had each other at
goodbye.

because i’ve always been addicted to catastrophe;
and you were just the beginning of my end.

the night begins to dress the earth
as i kneel beside the windowsill
watching the stars, the only part
of the world left unchanged.

and i listen to you breathe,
your sighs soft like an autumn day.
the nape of your neck curves
like a crane dusted with wanderlust,
its wings unfolded toward the moon.

the way your legs tangle
around your idea of a perfect girl
makes me sink to the floor,
draping my arms around my legs.
i stare down at my kneecaps,
one an oval, the other a full moon –
you would’ve called this imperfection.

but i kneel beside the windowsill
searching for train tracks and
airplanes that’ll lead you home
because even though you tore me apart,
i need to know that when i set you free
you’ll be going someplace better.

and the moon will sigh at the sight
of two not-quite lovers parting, but
i forgive you.

i forgive you for
dreaming of prettier green eyes
and softer skin and
telling me i would never be good enough.

because after i stitch myself back together
i’ll be strong enough to move the stars
closer to the windowsill with my eyes
and stop the effluvia of tears
that’ll pour from my soul every time
i think of you,
breathing.

we love the pieces, shattered and confused.
broken and misled, you dreamed of days when
you would find the one who could hold you
together before they set you apart, just one more
time. and we drink down the sadness and eat up
the morose, because this world is full of
great depressions. a struggling, recovering,
hopeless addict for the irredeemable and never
again. we chose revenge, when it’s redemption
we’re craving. and now this ****** battle takes
its honour in the sky as we send thursdays our
love and wish upon two stars for the grace we
were never given. i may have been a mistake, a
mishaps, a worthless outcast. but the colours
in your voice told me otherwise, even though
the talk in your eyes denied everything. and
the trees, they talk, they whisper the things
you were too cowardly to admit.

so i’ll pretend to fall in love with life once again,
until you’re ready to open your eyes up
to a different world.

fingers (and legs) lace tight together. i can
feel our time together seeping through the cracks.

and i know that once daylight breaks
and rose petals lead me all the way home,
existence will be just one lungful of air away.

(but you’ve left me breathless once again, darling.)