g.a.
swallow the blood of the covenant
between you and the lord, they said,
but the wine tasted too sweet. the wine
tasted like a cancer that i had to wean off.

t.h.
fall out boy should write a song called
"welcome to your own personal hell",
and it should tell our story of betrayal.

t.p.
the silence is a loud house guest. i could
not sleep at night because of it. your hands
felt like i was grabbing onto stones, onto
something hard and unfamiliar.

j.s.
i swallowed my words, which replaced my hunger
aches. while i grew skinnier, you swallowed your
animalistic tendencies through another.

m.t.
do you ever feel afraid of not fitting back
into someone's life like you used to? but
i learned that once something is broken,
the cracks will still remain.

n.d.
a time bomb
t i c k i n g
tick
tock
tick
tock
every time i spoke, it sounded like a threat
but nothing i could do would calm him.
i made sure i was at a safe distance
before the explosions happened.

t.r.
an eye for an eye
an ear for an ear
you ruined me
so in turn
i had to ruin you

c.h.
the words you spoke weren't enough
for the green grass on the other side
to look like a crime scene. kind words
do not bring back dead people. kind
words do not pay off jail bonds. kind
words did not stop depression.

r.m.
there was something so captivating
about taking you off the path of salvation
of maybe being your calypso, but penelope
had other plans for us.

a.a.
i want to build a fire from the ashes
the other lovers left behind. i want the
tragedy to fertilize a garden from your
chest, to crack you open painlessly.

you came into my life like a comet,
like a ball of fire, like something
beautiful that i want to put my faith in
and also perhaps set fires inside me.
and maybe one day, i can stunt your
doubt and block it in it's tracks.

i want to persevere
through the trials
so this yields a fruit
that nobody else could create.

this is a storytelling of two
fantasy worlds, similar to
the sun and
the moon
types of symbolism often
included in novels like ours
are airplanes, birds, the galaxies
in the sky, or the freckles dotting
your skin. to close the distance
between these requires great
effort, but good things like you
are well worth the wait. "stop bringing
in the sky", i say, "the sky is falling for you.
you must let yourself trust that this
fog won't cloud your judgements."

the daffodils you helped grow
led us through the gloomy fog once,
so please place your trust in me
and the daffodils again.

can i trust the hands of the clock
to protect us? or is time punishing
me with an fruitless love for the sun
while I am the moon?

in retrospect, the banging in the room could
have been mistaken for an escalating argument,
or even something more passionate,
but it was my deafening heartbeat,
as loud as a car crash, over and over,
in my dreams, i hold the paintbrush
and i paint
your sunset eyes,
your sunrise smile,
dimples like valleys,
our worlds lie on this parallel plane where
our strings cross once and don't meet again

that must mean you're a muse
or a tragedy waiting to happen,
so it's losing the fear of falling
so it's falling in love
so it's understanding myself through you
so it's understanding you through the window
rather than staring at you through a mirror

my trauma home looks like
a blighted ecosystem
thriving with atoms that
name themselves anxiety
name themselves self-doubt
name themselves a graveyard
where no hole is big enough to
hide the defecation, the diseased,
the gap between these ribs.
i want to rip myself open
with alcohol,
watch my body coil up like a snake
watch myself come undone
watch myself spill secrets
in *****
like alphabet soup but thicker.
the spiders look enlarged, enraged,
enveloped in their webbed paradise
waiting for me to land on sticky skin.
the sharks find their next prey by blood, but the only way i will draw blood is by biting my tongue too much.

i am the femme fetale who
doesn't see the lights of the train
but lures people towards the tracks
i am the siren who doesn't know
her singing creates destruction
ensnaring victims with her voice
i am the whirlwind that creates
sinkholes with warm words
soft embraces, gentle whispers,
i am the quiet
before the explosion of a grenade
i am the explosives
but i look just like alluring magic
when you sink down here,
pitch black becomes your muse
instead of the kaleidoscope you
seemed like you were expecting
you swallow me, all warm words,
all soft embraces, all gentle whispers,
but embracing me is like a car crash
where the impact may be fatal

we share saliva like secrets between friends,
taste each other like the appetizers before the main course,
**** frantically like rabbits, and the lights still stay off when
we make love.
it’s not until
her name
spills
from your tongue as we make love &
i have cottonmouth.
you don’t apologize either.

i write love songs for you in the sand, but high tide
always dissolves my words by sunrise. the hazy sunlight
floats through the early morning window, and the ghosts
invite themselves into my home and inside my head. i
have to ask, is it love if I take you, or is it love if I set you
free? my words become meaningless if my mouth can’t
keep up with your insatiable animal instinct. is this
the only way i can separate you from calling me a
friend, by separating my legs?

Odysseus was washed ashore on this island like a
beached whale, homesick and yearning for hands
that my hands could not fit. he coughs reaching out
for a savior, and water drains from his lungs like he
kept the whole sea – undiscovered - inside him.
sometimes, i have
dreams about drowning.
sometimes, i end up suffocating because
i know Odysseus is not mine to drown in.

“Promise me that this crime of passion doesn’t
find it’s way to Penelope,” I beg for mercy.

“Home is where the heart is – “ Odysseus stubbornly
reminds me, “—But my home does not look like Ogygia.”

It’s always a fever: hungry, insatiable, shameless passion.
when the lion is fed his meat and he cleans the bones,
it is time to move on. the lion can distinguish the elephant
in the room, and swallow the prey until one of us feels
absent and you end up full. what is beyond the veil might
leave us homesick. i take a swallow, and pour the rest
down the drain.