please don't ask
why my words
are so intent on
chaining your heart
to the nightmares I've
stuffed my pillows
full of
with promises rusting
into blackened iron
links and truths that
would shine better as
lies

I never meant
to cage you
in my dreams -
it's just that my
eyelids solder shut
and I cannot pry my silver
eyelashes apart without
cracking at the faultlines
I forget to mention
whenever I wake up
alone

it's just that my
soul needs more
than a little oiling
more than a little
you
to breathe away this
metal corroding its way into my
tear ducts, dripping rust
down my cheeks,
choking on 'blood oxide'
and mechanical residue
buried underneath my
fingernails

it's just that every
******* 'i love you'
is yet another link
around my finger,
wrenching the life out
of me,
blue shadows engraved
on my skin never shine
like silver in the sun
but if this is the
only clanging chain
of heartbeats echoing
in metal boxes
from me to
you;
what can I do?

it's just that there
was a lock somewhere
along this mess of coils
and chinks and mistakes
but oh god,
when did the rust
between you and I
melt into three thousand
miles of mercury trickling thermometer
poison into everything
we say?
I've lost my keys;
they had sunk first and
I will sink last

it's just that
the clinking thump thump of your heartbeat
is my lullaby;
it's just that
knowing you breathe warmth is enough
to cool the burning silver in my lungs;
it's just that
close to you is the closest I will ever
feel to 'alive'

it's just that
if I can't keep you -

nobody can

you apologise,
'I am bad with words'
but words are all
you are

you build me
home
out of parchment promises;
tangling tiny houses in
a line with your heartstrings;
whispers of 'forever' trailing
from chimney-topped letters,
the smoke fading between
the lines of notebook poetry
skies

I don't belong in your
pretty paper towns

I have never needed
a lighter in my pocket
to set myself alight;
flame is in my veins,
burning slowly through my
bloodstream until open wounds
drip liquid fire and
smoke is all I exhale

your heart might as well
be pumping kerosene -
flammable like
meteorites burning black
holes where clouds and
dreams hang white
against a night of ink
and my scribbled thoughts
scratched out a million times
over, and then once more
until only apologies twinkle in
the sky

you spit your own
wildfires, I forget
you burn villages on your own;
forests of words and thorns
and tangles, blank leaves of
paper fluttering slowly off branches
of kindling wood,
igniting as soon
as the winds against us
are too strong to fight;
off-white flowers
and syllable petals singeing
black;

we are only ashes
*at our feet

my hands shake
too much;
my fingers are unsure
my words trip over
my tongue and die
before I can pry them
past my lips

my hands shake
too much
for poetry

my hands shake
too much
to hold myself
together

august
you hand me your heart
wrapped in crumpled brown paper
and clumsy string tied
around the forever you've
stamped across your palms
over and over until
red ink smudges the tiny, careful
♥
in the corner

but you have forgotten
and i have forgotten
that my fingers are only flame
and my words are just smoke
that fills the void between us
until i can't breathe
and you can't hear me scream

yet i'm holding brown paper anyway
and the string tangled around our hands
is burning slowly
in time to your heartbeat screaming and thrashing
in my fist
and i wish my fingers were smoke
and my words were flame instead

does it hurt to burn
or to inhale
?