When the day is over, we crawl back into our spaces.

While others wrap themselves in sheets to ward off the cold,
you swaddle me until I am blue, and black, and you
I am the color of you.
(which is a strange thing to say
since people don't have colors--
then why do you?)

You are the shade of dead lilies strewn
like lovers over a grave. No you, you are
the hue of the dawn that peels itself from
the arms of the earth that stretch across
everything
just to hand the world to the sky.

But your color is different tonight.
I recognize the color of aphids trapped
on windblown dandelions. I could count
the wisps of a dazed summer that wandered
to sleep in the nebula of your hair. And your hands
have grown into flowers, and you give them to me
and I

don't know how to water your hands.
So I pull you in by the stumps of your arms
and whisper

"I want the rest of you."

at night, i strip you until you're naked
peeling the layers of day's dust off you

sometimes your touch replies to mine
like when you shiver against the sponge

but on most days, you just lie there
blank eyes staring, sometimes waiting

for the ceiling to cave in on your body
pressed tight against the heat of my skin

and a part of me is hoping you're listening
for my heartbeat in this strange silence

that somehow you're scared of losing me
through your inner fog and nightmares

but when your fingers wind around mine
there are slow vines on the trellis of my arm

it's a lot like suffocating in a forest of you
where your scent overpowers and i am lost

knowing my roots are bound too tight
around the surface soil of your sins

and i know that pulling myself loose
would only break you all over again.

I read her skin like my favorite novel

memorizing the lines and passages of time
and tracing her character outlines

until we hit the ******

-- they call it the apex of emotion
I call it the pinnacle of her arch

because her back becomes broken dialogue
monologues reduced to gasps

while the innermost character struggles are flung
wide open, until a million errors spill out
punctuation out the window
grammar's gone through the door

my name becomes an expletive

I read her skin like my favorite novel
-- there's something different every time

Lilies mean I dare you to love me.

When you slipped out of your white dress, I saw a pool of petals around your ankles. You kicked them with a smile. It must have been cold, because you walked into my arms and whispered “Color me”.

And I did. With kisses that came and went, a flash-flood of hands over your skin. With the scent of wild summer nights that we spent chasing our paper boats along the stream.

We tripped over fallen logs who must have been lovers who had forgotten to breathe, because beauty is a drug and love is just as poisonous as ozone. I wound my toes around yours, and we lay on rosebushes. I watched you stitch your fingers into mine, and to color the thread of thorns, I chewed the inside of my cheek.

By the end of summer, you were turning purple and I had already gone gray.
Lilies mean I dare you to love me. Which flowers will dare you to stay?

Tell me we'll never get old

because age is just another word for weary
and you're never going to get tired of this
pocket-to-palm life we've built
out of everyday knick knacks and
the daily delivery of baby's breath
from your lips to mine.

Tell me I'll never be alone

because empty air on our bed isn't wasted.
It's just waiting, spaces unfolding
like pressed lungs in the dark--
like the way I've memorized your nape
the side glanced so often
that I know it more than your face.

Tell me things will never change

because change means progression
and we've got perfection tucked away
inside the spaces between us
where the lights are so bright
that cataracts can't keep you from me.