In this moment, I love the face of a dead man,
Repeated by chance in the guise of a stranger.

His lips quirk the same way in
Sweet sarcasm,
And in that moment,
Three years beneath the earth scatters,
Ashes to the wind.

And you are here.

His shoulders span the same width
And I know- cupped in my
Needful, grasping palms-
Their touch before I even
Pass a phrase to their owner.

I know, his abrasiveness is softened from a scour
To a pleasant heat
And those who hate it
Love him fiercely, unreasonably, and unquestioningly.

I know this
And yet this man
Is nothing more than a mirage left
In the wake of a fire storm.


After the remnants of goose-flesh have failed to leave my skin
I'll take it.

This racking need forged at my core
Lives and breathes to want for more
It peers between my bone and flesh
From wall to wall, it's fingers press.

The gnashing, chewing, rending pain
That bows my body up in twain
Seeks the surface, yearns to breathe
I stamp it down inside of me.

Child, monster, cursed thing
Precious, putrid, close to me.
In clips and phrases, peer on through
The world will see a glimpse of you

Place you in the netherplace
An internal nudge to nowhere
Where the line of your smile hurts less
Than a break;
More a persistent ache or
A fading bruise.
In absence,
The presence is still there…
I can still smell the summer on your skin
Catch traces in the steps I’ve taken
To keep the span of the earth between.

Passed the time searching,
Tracing the circles
Of this tired path I’ve worn in the soil.
Eyes touching faces,
Skimming the places
The crowds that have swollen and roiled.

Red brimming eyelids,
Sleep stolen violence;
I’ve curled up with nothing, away from the light.
Drift off to no where-
Found you were somewhere,
Sought then to flee there: off into the night.