Pearl earrings and a polka dotted
mug, three shots deep
and I'm bleeding tar
and feathers. You'll be
in England and I'll be chewing
on cement trying to break
the rest of my teeth. Listening
to meteor showers whisper
that it doesn't count if the last
sixty wishes are all the same.
I remember you told me
you'd walk the Earth for me.
Would you still? Or are your legs
too sore from lugging the weight
of your pride and malignancy?

I've been thinking a lot about
that first time after the apocalypse
when you slammed me against
the plaster and ripped every shred
of cloth from my skin, forcing tongue
to throat, grazing like giraffes in fields
of teeth.
I screamed for hours, overbearing
the television in the next room
and alerting the neighborhood
to the carnal intoxication in your tiny
bedroom. I would have let you
****** me that night, if I knew
it would make you come.

In the morning I stole away
with a few forgotten kisses
grinning like the Daliha
and building castles in
my mind. Dreaming
about going back to the time
we first met in an empty sculpture
classroom, with my face flushed
and eyes averted, trying to breathe
and slow my heartbeat, knowing
your ex-lover was murmuring
quips in my ear.
On days like this I wish
that you were Botecelli
laying brushstrokes to your image
of me being blown ashore
by the winds; that I was still
your Venus, and that 22
had never happened.

My shirt smells of you tonight;
like maroon sheets and air conditioners,
but I'm still blowing my nose in it,
filling the crevasses with little pools
of shiny slime, reminiscent of old
nail polish.
Maybe it's because I'm too cheap
to buy tissues, or toilet paper just isn't cutting
it for me anymore, yet I'm pretty sure
that I needed to find a legitimate
reason for my nose to be intimate
with the gentle cotton fabric, without
giving away too many inappropriate
notions of affection.
I've found a way I could press
you against my face,
like the way my nose normally fits
in the nook of your neck,
when I'm nuzzling you at night.
It smells the same as you, minus
the cigarettes, and it still makes me want
to graze my teeth over your earlobe
and tease my fingers along the edge
of the elastic on your boxers,
even when you're fifteen minutes away
and you passed up ******* me to spend time
with Brian.

I've walked too far for armor, baby
to arrive at clashes and war cries
and the festering soil riddled with
still-beating hearts.
Can you hear me exhale, into damp
air filled with exasperated throats.
Dried up from night terrors and
*****'s moans.
I'm still running, from the purgatory
in between Now and Then.
But the only moments I find myself
stuck in, are the sticky sour memories
of liquor ***** spiderwebs made,
sprayed across the enclosure.
You can't walk backwards up the stairs
or you won't know when you've arrived
and magic eight ***** can only tell you
so much.
I've come too far for amor, Sweetheart,
but I am still only baggage and loose change.

When I realized I had fallen in love with you
I slit my wrists to stop the bleeding.

I used threads of your hair I had stolen,
from a voodoo doll to sew them up.

But it seeped through my sleeves so I tye dyed
my shirt with phlegm, feces, and ****.

After it was dry it looked like your face,
like finding Jesus or Mary on a pancake or in coffee.

You're my messiah and I would wash your feet
with my hair but I haven't any, cause I shaved it off
when you left.

I wear hats all day now, my head gets cold, and the beanies
smell like hair oil, shampoo, and follicles.

And sometimes I wonder what you would think,
of the way my hair matts down from the pressure and heat.

Kind of like the way you bedded me down with the same,
weight and warmth of blankets and body hair.

What do you do when you haven't eaten all day
and you're scared of being fatter than your significant other?

Paint your nails **** red and hope your heels are high enough on Saturday.

Once we danced along to the same
sweet song, that you composed so
softly on acoustic chords.

Now, it is just a beat you keep
in time with, banging on pots
and pans like a child throwing
a tantrum. It's not my fault

your girlfriend looks like your
kid sister, or that I ******
your best friend
because you were too busy

maintaining another meaningless
relationship with 'the love of your life';
A title you give away like the generic
trophies parents get personalized

to cheer their children up when
they lose. Eventually, they'll realize
they're all the same, and changing

the name on the plaque doesn't
make up for failing. Like picking petals
off flowers, the only one that matters

is the one left standing in the end.
But the next time you go plucking
daisies from fields, and steal

their manes for predicting
the future. I still won't believe
in love. I never did.

This floatation device doesn't work
so well anymore, not now that night
is falling and the chill sets through
my marrow.
Currents were made to drift,
and so they do. In and out
the tides swell like lovers
falling into and out of bed.
All the rocking has made
me dizzy, and the seasickness
and nausea pools in the water
like shark red undercurrents
and skies at dawn.

The rain is usually an indication
that you're entering the eye,
where it is calm for seconds,
fingertips tingling, twitching,
waiting for the explosion
that rips the sails from above
you, and sends you plunging
into an eddy.
And when you are tossed overboard,
watching your ship thrashed between
the waves and weather;
waiting for the searchlights;
don't set off your flare at the first sign,
or you'll lose your S.O.S to the sea.
  
This floatation device doesn't work
so well anymore, not since you left
with what's left of my wreckage,
and the farther we drift apart,
the more I feel like dying.