you're a stairway to heaven
your voice reverberates in my skull like a hymn in an empty church
your fingers flutter across ***** keys as they use to grip my thighs under wooden pews
your lips purse against my sins as chilled sangria pools from your warm, parted mouth
your heart stutters out prayers as your veins pump out wine instead of blood
your body quakes above me as you're converted from man to meal
I shatter beneath you as I repent for all that I have done
you're an elevator to hell

Don't make love sound like wispy trees.
It's a bad commercial on a static age-old tv
on replay in the darkest corner of the apartment covered in cobwebs.
The stale air around it from keeping your windows shut
tight and the door locked with words stuffed in between its hinges.
Maybe love can warm ice cold hearts that have
frozen over from the heat of hypothermia.
Perhaps it has the ability to perpetuate that
painful kind of longing for a bed so small it doesn't
make you feel alone when you end your day staring blankly into the ceiling.
Many kinds of ghosts will haunt you in their wake
when you think that you could be safe.
But death and decay exist as ice cream flavours
in that abandoned parlor down on 79th street like
the broken frames you see in the alleyway still
holding flash-frozen memories of the distant past
and things that will never be again.
Walk down streets covered in dried leaves and
the stench of potpourri in the air reminding you
of a time with flare skirts and victorian columns.
You might feel the gazes on your neck in ounces
of gleeful displeasure and tantalizing advancements
but love is not always a lustful venture.
You've gotten used to the layer of dust enveloping your skin
and the celestial cocoon keeping you on the barren side
of the decaying hedge.
The whispers and groans from swings will tell you stories
of great loves and greater passions and you will quiver
underneath the weight of finding a love that fits you
the same way lakes drown in the midst of forests
Take a walk past the buildings erected from ideas of efficiency
and settle in a nest that breeds the quirkiest of all sounds
underneath a clear midnight sky
Let weeping willows hold you close and tangle your fingers
in languid bodies of water, unashamed and unafraid
Dust your bookcases and let the deep sighs of your floorboards speak.
Let the phone lines crackle and the panels heave.

(m.e.)