i’ve decided i’m letting it all shatter.

i can’t just look like this, all the time –
acting like i’m full of love and sea salt.

i’m so sick of building roads to my heart like
i’m some ******* harlot. (wait,
i am some ******* harlot.)

wait, why do i keep catching
your smell at the back of my throat?
who said you could be there loving me – ?
certainly not i.

maybe i should have told you all this
before baby, it’s etched into my seams.
“i am *****” and i am not
stopping.

everyone pretends to loves a *****
and right now pretending is
good enough
for me.

now in your haste,
you’ve created a
montage of emotions.

you told me you knew
how to do anything,
but i watch you with
your rickety fingers and
wonder how consistent
one’s heart can be with
such erratic hands.

i came to you like a torn
still frame.
blown in the wind,
ripped, tattered, cracked.

you took one look at me,
one real look,
and you froze.
with terror,
with uncertainty,
with love.

your eyes shred me to pieces
and one gusty night,
you blew me away.

my mother is a hummingbird;
always nervous,
fretting between ideas
faster than we can see,
too full of memories to
stay still for long.

but i am the tortoise;
taking months to put
one foot in front of
the other, too curious,
too foolish.
i build my shell so
that the world can
not reach me, so
that it only echoes,

echoes,

and fades away
as i bury beneath
my skin.

kiss me like i’m a falling star,
so when our lips meet, fireworks explode.

carry me like we’re lovers at sea,
tumbling and turning, but taking things slow.

smother me like some foggy haze,
fill my every pore and set me aglow.

need me like i’m the air you breathe,
and cherish me so that i always know.

hold me like it’s the end of infinity,
and until that very moment, never let me go.

stygian nights
and i peer into the sky,
contemplating the planets that sail
round and round on riverboats
in their titian 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 sometimes i lift my face skyward
to let my eyes drink
the same silver water
the planets glide across.

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

and 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 follows me to bed.

i guess i'm made of stark marrow
and naked ocean eyes,
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.

his hands were in my hair shoving my head down. i turn my face, and flashflash, i’m stitching myself inside out and all i can come up with is stained betrayal. his teeth are tough on my neck. i imagine they’re metal and somehow, it hurts less. his hands on my hips and he’s pulling me backwards. i’m screaming in my head, my skin is cracking and molding.

i still dream about it.

i still run my fingers along the edges and look at the scars, the bruises, the cigarette burns.

i throw my arms over my face and his mouth is by my ear and he whispers “i know you want it.”

i’ve always wanted it, just not with you.

i feel the wall against my head before the rest of me follows and crumbles like old newspaper.

someday i will be in the yellow pages, soaking through the paper and smiling, half-heartedly, through the words.

and i still wonder if the last lesson was learned. what never happened that night and never was, with him anyways, because of the blood between my thighs.

in my memory his face blurred in two different directions – as his jeans unzipped and i stopped breathing. he blurred into a future and i blurred into a past but somehow the world stopped at the present. his hands were unusually soft on my face.

they say jesus looks on and his palms are burning black. i’d love to smoke his skin in a snail shaped pipe and fly.

his hands are going up my shirt, the walls spin in twenty different versions of up and down. colour can no longer be contained. in my mind i run. in reality i couldn’t move.

the story will never end. the story will never change. i know my future will be just like my past, because affection is my weakness and the hole in my heart is growing. they say jesus will kiss the bruises on my hips and tell me it’s okay. if i get on my knees and pray well, they say he’ll forgive me.

i stopped believing in belief long before he tried to take it away.

i used to swallow pills as if it were like
catching moonshine between my lips.
but my dear, you seem to
forget
that you are now my moonshine
and if you leave…

and i am convinced that this collapsed bone structure
of mine
is a constellation because only stars
can twist so much inside and still
be audible.

i wonder if you are ever cold
while being a blanket
for me to want,
to cover this half-heart i wear
in my eyes.

but your arms stretch like the universe
and make me feel so irrelevant.