my reflection, anatomical inaccuracy reads something like:

fairy dust in a silt layer, bones all shattered at the press of her fingers, and for months I molded a sandcastle around the soft

sinking, drinking ichor from a cocktail glass and dragging nails across my discomfort -

did you see that girl taking a tempest inside herself, to warp her sinew, spreading from this side of the universe to other?

in the lamplight I bit a secret onto the ridge of her spine; *sometimes I sleep near fires hoping my insides become glass

lashes kissing, i dissolve
            into these crumpled sheets
     which smell all too much
like your winter touch
           carved into my body
      sprinkled with sea salt and
minutes turn into falling petals
   now quick sips of burning scotch
are flames licking at my throat
                        a ceaseless dream

i still taste you on
the tip of my tongue,
sharp and silky and starry
even my neck remembers
your lazy lips and naughty violet imprint
i still see myself
fragile in your moonlit eyes
between soft blinks
and gentle crinkles

unwillingly slipping
into melting amnesias
and hazy evasion forces its way
down my throat
it dances fractals in my lungs
taunting me,
discarnate and disbodied
drifting ethereals turned ghostly fog
staining my crooked memories

escape with me, starry-eyed
a smoky shadowland
where sin is infinite
hell warmly embraced
and lust a syrupy *****.

desire is so crookedly pristine
when untouched by
the ugly delusion you call love

luring, seducing
the inky ebony of eve
coaxes us sweetly, chillingly
to join its empty prisoners --

passion aches
inject me with your raven smoke;
crave me,
consume me

come and dip with me in the night
where our veiled vices can find relief;
its venom will feed my impure nocturne
and your wicked clutches can snake into
the perverse piths of my phantasm and person.

A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!

And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?

Such pure leaps and spirals ----
Surely they travel

The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift

Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.

Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,

And the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a spread of hot petals.

The comets
Have such a space to cross,

Such coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off ----

Warm and human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling

Through the black amnesias of heaven.
Why am I given

These lamps, these planets
Falling like blessings, like flakes

Six sided, white
On my eyes, my lips, my hair

Touching and melting.
Nowhere.

i.

those velvet hands curled around my glass throat
but i laughed at the pretty little splinters
that would pierce your delicate fingers
while my fractured shards scattered
across your marble floor
sparkling
shattered -- fragmented --
broken

ii.

my ashen core melted into your blazing sorry
and crept up into the narrow
crevices of your collarbone -- an exodus
for this bloodless being
and this cold coffee has never before tasted
so empty
so tired
so gone
so much like

iii.

this galaxy -- you should try it, maybe
i escape instantly into
an astral tenderness and silly little
constellations like the ones you used to trace
on my starlit waist while we smiled about
nothing & everything & skin
                                       & skin
                                       & skin

but does the serpentine smoke that escapes your lips
still entangle and curl around unspoken words
that dance and linger on your tongue
like my hungry kisses used to?