Stars fade to nothing
then orange - a fog in the distance.
Darkness here is not blackness.
There are no pinpricks,
no windows or beacons of hope
to rely on. Just the glow
of street lamps in their millions.
A well organised army
frozen in time.
Cat's eyes and headlights,
neon street signs and the tick
of a old iron clock. This city sleeps
yet there is no night time—
just a honey glazed haze
the fluorescent glare of two million insomniacs.

this cinnamon realization
rolls around in my chest:
honeyed sunlight
apple-crisp mornings
laughter and fear in the name of fun
quiet anarchy
gardens, beaches, friends -
I am happy, or close enough.
what more could I ask for?
what more could I dream for?
to be home, to be with you: but
here is becoming home, October
has replaced July with orange glory;
clouds and mountains and salt water
all the same, absent sunsets,
huge-moon nights, hot sunrises,
stars and soul mates and folk music.
O that I could dance
forever in the evenings of October,
skeleton ghost and graveyard
pumpkin spice and falling leaves,
the endings that give us new life
all are here, *****-heavy
fear-free, future hallows blissfully
unknown, pasts blissfully
undreamed-of.

i ****** on your breath
hoping it would bring the pink back onto my cheeks
but at some point, i stopped being
fresh-faced
and realized that i eventually will stop
loving my old loves. my smile
has expired, it grew too exhausted of needing
everyone and everything
to be happy, licking my lips until they chap and a
boy or girl wants to dissect them.

it is like
i open my mouth with the expectation of
something falling in
that won’t taste too bad. it is like i
want to keep everything and everyone warm, near
hot
for me.

then suddenly, i am the moon
and neither the sun nor the stars can align
with me. they lived too long without
keeping secrets,
needed more gravity to stay awake. living is hard
when your body
is always open for business.

I have to stop saying your name when I wake up
and start saying it
before I lay myself to rest.

it is not immortal,

I imagine braiding our veins together
then using them as a noose,
feeling our pulses
compete
until they are too exhausted to continue and
              one of us loses

but what
is winning except dying young
anyway. I want to die

to the sensation
of someone tying and untying my veins,
thin bleeding strings, like
cherry stems.

I want someone to mourn me for my *****, I
want to seem as mountainous
as a knitted sweater
where my lovers would have gotten

        stuck in the seams and
everyone will know I am still pure.

i am a home for ghosts. they
believe
they are something else, something better, disguised
as the moon or clean sheets or milk

cloudy saliva,
boys dripping down my spine.
they cling to me until my ghosts escape

and enter through their ears, i am busy emptying
them from my stomach.

sometimes swallowing
feels like downing wet concrete that should be used
to build a tombstone – sometimes
boys who
try to fill me up never get a chance to leave.

we try to hang ourselves from our hair
holding hands
imagining
them shatter to broken bones

knowing that
this is something we should not be doing, me &
boys.

we deserve to have
our guts slip out from unnatural holes,
throats that my ghosts made it seem like we touched
slashed but not aching

because he and i imagined the entire thing.

i see
his body still thin as a stem
that even a ghost could fracture

and paint lies in blood all about lost love. and still
no one asks
                             if
it is me that is doing the haunting.

you promised
to introduce me to hell, linked our arms together
like thread through a needle
and i never considered that hell would
be living without you.

our
hours of bloodlust,
heavy breathing for the blush on
my cheeks –
the reminder of all
i could stain with the red beneath.

you knew
the best way you could take care of me
is by destroying me

you knew
i had become addicted to being
cradled by my pain
and
loneliness, so

hell was not a fiery gate opening, a wound,
hell is a door slamming in my face.

1.
It's odd Time never came
To wonder under these beaches' loam,

To walk forty steps to a tide
Where sea-green foam flashes full its blade.

     2.
     Trammeled like a nun, the girl
     Swept by me thoughtless. A root's gnarl

     Could symbolize slim pain
     Beneath the scleras: two jackals' den.

     3.
     Hurt inwardly, like darkened stars,
     So bursting silence is all one hears.

4.
The monotony of this shoreline is a throwback.
What phantoms come: an electric shock.

Why ten years ago is all I know
Is not half as important as who or how.

5.
The autumnal tremor, the rainless moonlight...
Memories of little weight....