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Kissing, supporting—
then sniffing, then snorting:
Xanax, ******, Tylenol.
Alcohol will never expire
dealer, buyer—
you're getting higher and—and—and
Louder, louder—
you're drowning in prescription powder.

You're given ***, speed, salvation
It's not love, it's medication.
Whisper it.
Caterpillar afternoon,
mom and daddy are home soon.
I stretch out on unkempt grass
a cat counts its claws,
I count clouds through blue glass.

A hairy man looks over my fence,
I feel my stomach tense.
A crooked finger says, “come here”
the ground grips me like a vice
Muscles ice with fear

I run towards the screen door
stumbling on a muddy marble floor.
A screen, lock between me and the lawn,
I peak through a curtained window,
and he’s gone.
I want to ask if you know how wet our noise is
because my tongue
against your
jaw, against your earlobe, has the same
melody as rain.

The air is never dry with us
water is our blood, we breathe lightning storms
into each other and call it a pulse (

where there is silence
where there is
no weather
there is no way for anything to grow as we do).
He has a mouth like morning
and picked me up
from the ground by the ten second rule,
the time it takes for one hundred thirty million
babies to open their mothers,
four hundred times he could have been
on the train to come back.

He says I say I’m sorry in circles
but Earth does it,
her new cycle every day,
why can’t I.

He should say
he is sorry in circles: there have
been nearly three hundred sixty five trains
since
we knew how to **** each others’
sadness through a straw
and not puke, he would try to swallow it all.

He must see me as
moss now, frizzy-haired, meant to be
laid to rest
on the floor for everyone to
trip over
because I am the reason that leap years exist -
the skipping stone, spread water
on the ones I love
so they’ll be heavy and sink with me.

He must taste recycled beauty on me,
the way new light
turns the beds of his lips pink.

(I could not be her)
he needs to say sorry until our hearts are
the same shade of blue
from suffocating below everyone,
the bottom of
the ocean waiting to resurface as a wave.
we like hearing the sounds of our own voices
we like reassurance, and
to imagine that unlike what everyone might think,
we are the next best thing.
that's why this is so confusing.
these people are the next best thing
so why aren't they acting like it?
why aren't they acting like the brave,
insightful,
sometimes introspective,
people that i know they are.
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