I missed your skin
when it was green;
you called yourself
the queen of east.

I noticed
you tattooed my face
in ink behind
your eyelids now.

Your slippers red
and made of gems.  
You clicked them twice
and wished for me.  
They brought you to
a broken world;
you forced yourself
to call it home.  
You took the rubies
off your feet
and made a necklace
just for me.  
Toss the necklace
to the lake;
its gems are shattered
glass to me.  

You are born
a Capricorn,
but never saw
a mountain range -
Too fragile
of a mountain goat
to climb a single hill
ever since
tornadoes came
to smash your soul
and **** your life.  

Stare at moons
that visits days
and draws those who
forget to yawn.

They beleaguered me
until my dreams
and my lies
conflated
in the way gravity
used to be the same thing
as radiation,
but the dalliance
of the fundamental forces
was nothing
compared to the eternal love affair
between what I wanted
and what I pretended to have

If I would want to paint my life
in colors more than black and white,
then you would go
and catch a rainbow for me.

Only I
will ever know
where you learned
the art of catching colors.
You never told
a single soul,
but I can see
the truth you hold:

I know you once
were staring down
the rainbow that acts as a bridge to Heaven.
I know you once
had stagnant kaleidoscopes behind your eyes
whose beads were just bits of your own earth.

Dear, I hope you learn
that I do not want your kind of rainbow
with emo bands and sleeping pills,
with leaping from the window sills;
I do not want to see the world
through a foggy veil I believe is truth,
so when I'm ready to paint my life
in colors more than black and white,
I shall not turn to you,
but to the smoky place
that acts as a bridge to Hell.

for years they have wandered,
they have tip-toed through wonderlands and graveyards,
through cities and villages, through meadows and forests
you can tell from the scars that they were damaged,
that each terrain made a mark on their fragile skin

we spend an absurd amount of attention
on how those marks came to be; not enough
on the middle, who struggles to wash them off

no,

i will not tell you how
they felt as a tiny speck of pink dust
being brought into this enormous universe;
but i can repeat the story of their
breeze of a birth, a breath of fresh air

i will not tell you how
they felt changing addresses;
but i can repeat the story of how
their family packed their bags
and moved two blocks away,
leaving their father to grow
a collection of empty bottles
in his empty apartment

however,

i will tell you of the time
they found a constant star
in their ever-changing sky;
it burned them with each touch,
but they kept coming back,
intoxicated by the light
this star burned too bright for
our flickering lightbulb of a hero

i will tell you of the time
they changed zip codes, twice
in the span of eight months;
lost everything except for
dusty yearbooks,
hidden scars,
and a broken body.
each land pushed our hero
into infectious isolation
our hero began to grow in,
but they wanted to grow out

i will tell you of the time
they stared into another person's eyes;
felt caterpillars crawling
in their stomach,
unsure if they would grow
into moths or butterflies
but these caterpillars
never wove a cocoon
and our hero was left with
wriggling worms in their stomach

i will not tell you of the past
if it does not affect the present.
old scars are no concern;
they are only reminders that
the past was real

this life they lead
is something in-between;
between firsts and lasts
between new scars and old
between beginnings and endings

this origin story is being rewritten.

You’re the moon
and I’m the sun,
chasing you around the world,
trying to touch you with light,
while you wish to be among the stars beside you
that steal your spotlight,
but I promise you,
stars burn out and only come out at night.

I too will burn out
and then I will fade
so I’ll be just like you,
a dense rock floating through nothingness
until we join a collapsing cloud of solar dust.

Since we’re both denser than gas,
we might become stars –
even the same one –
but that could take eternity
and the universe might have expanded by then
to the point where it’s too cold for stars.

I cannot calculate the probability of meeting you again,
but right now,
you’re right here
and I’m chasing you around the world,
trying to touch you with light.

Watch the trepidation in the swinging of a chandelier,
as its candles choreograph their own silhouettes
on the pallid walls
to the beat of the creaking ceiling.

When the roof caves in,
the walls will stop being a dance floor to ghostly shadows,
the chandelier will crash to the table,
and the song of a rusty, trepid chain will end.

You will have learn to let yourself waltz
to the music in your own head
and you will have to learn let others watch you
because you are a fire, not a ghost
and you do not belong in the shadows you create
when you’re secretly making your pain into art.