it took days to leave that room
again, after we tucked ourselves in;
feet cold and perpetually sleepy eyed
as I tend to be on my best days.
left to my own devices, my hands
search for flesh to feel comfortable
so I carved into you like wet concrete,
pieces of information encoded and
left like detritus of a life lived in rooms
that spun like tops when we closed our eyes.
and as we slept on our sides, bodies fitting
together, my fingers gripping your hip bone
as if I could use it to bring myself back
to reality if the dreams turned sour
in the middle of the night; that is
if i found the courage to sleep at all.

I woke up in Atlantis
with a young heart;
full of panic and claustrophobia
hurting for love and a way to

   breathe underwater.

The rhymes I keep repeating in my head
regulate my pulse. But, I'm waiting for
someone to ask me to explain myself.
   Like Always.

There's  a marker in my hand,
and it just keeps leaving my name
in places. As if it has a mind of
its own. Her eyes make me nervous in
this light. I am not sure if I am

             safe.

She sits behind 4 plates of glass
watching the clouds and the
colors separate in the sky;
waiting with eyes big
like harvest moons and
a heartbeat stifled like
gunshots from blocks away.
5 full thoughts from fragile
she's obsessed with the
concept of space and what
too much of it can do to a person
and I left my own philosophies
on the subject, written in code
across the back of her knuckles
tapped out like biorhythms in perfect time.
I've got strong hands built entirely of
ink where I hold a strange heart
and I'm learning to rewire
my nature with hers so we can
coexist on the same planes simultaneously;
I watch her pinch the bridge of her nose
and I'm cleaning and adjusting
the pair of glasses that sit comfortably
on mine, allowing me to see
the spaces between our shared syllables
and I'm synchronizing our watches
to the pace that we fall into naturally
breaths held like tongues and
left in our lungs to be forgotten.

I made a home
for myself there
on the beach at
the end of the world
breaking shafts of
light across my knee
as if they were wood
or hearts
or other things
that you can use
to start fires
under a weak shelter
made of open air
and palm fronds
strung together like
sudden coincidences
I spent moonlight carving
art into the sand
to be washed away
like sins at high tide
under a sky always
the color of the sea
below; reflected.
walking the shore in
slow concentric circles
I built a map with no
tools or paper, using
the wrinkles and scars
on my hands as homemade
topography; proof of life.

Around the corner, carefully
spread under the weight of
an artificial skeleton
partially collapsed like light
bent in a glass; displaced.
I spit static at her feet
like a broken tv threat
in the middle of a storm
while times face spins
and gives away pieces of
itself, generously, hand over hand
slowly becoming expended.

We've become victimized
by spacial distortion, left
with no options. Standing
as question marks with
long shadows as dusk dies
making gestures with mouths
that build dust on bedsheets.
I tell her that I love her like
liferafts and that in the ocean
of days she is keeping me afloat.
The words break the ground into
uneven sections, missing all fault
lines and creating walls of syllables,
tall like trees that flower and cut off
all lines, leaving us momentarily
incommunicado.