Wine sparkles on her tongue, in the same shade of pink
Buzzing through her lips and cheeks, warming her laughter
Gold glimmers in her eyes and around her neck
Where my jealous hands want to be, feeling her blood and breath
Jean friction at her hips, where my teeth want to gnaw
Painful heat in between, where my mouth wants to draw-
Art likened to the greats, in a language we've discovered tonight
We will never speak it again, here it will rest. Right?

I poured your coffee this morning as if you were me,
Forgetting the individuality of a morning's order,
Distracted by the tangles of skin unbound by surface
Surrounded by the scent of cinnamon and heat-
I'm sorry you didn't touch it.

I still feel the warmth from your hands on my back
Pressing in sorrowful apologies for spilling your guts
Draining recognized reservoirs of our past lives
Things I've been carrying fearfully,
Liberated

Your hair still dancing in my memory, there animated
Now barely settled in the afternoon, from a morning's breeze
Floating through the sunlight from my window
Settling to rest on my bed, where it will lay forever-

Right?

Pause.

Is it You that I crave?
Or am I seeking Someone from forever ago,
Diagnosing you with what is familiar to me-
You are not sick

I am sorry for concealing myself,
Lying through the omission of romance

It seems that daylight just wasn’t for us.

I bet you're here to see the poem about you-
It doesn't exist.

I struggle to bring my attention to my fingertips
I’d like nothing more than to allow my hands to give words to the buzzing
I dream of scraping out the navy-blue lead feathers that swim in my stomach
Their quills pricking into my ribs and dusting my lungs
Turning the air inside them to crystals, betraying the trustful inhales
They claw their way out in the exhales, tightening my throat a little more every time
Navy-blue used to feel like an anvil pulling my heels down through the soft moss
Into the cold mud and slamming through the hard clay like a boreal quicksand
Now it feels more like the only thing that’s keeping me from floating away
It’s the only thing that I can remember, but the memory itself I can’t recall
It’s something I’ve felt before in some lifetime, but a ball and chain for this body
Now it’s nothing more than cold wind blowing linen against my ankles
Sea spray stinging my cheeks, leaving them red as the cardinal’s song
The black and blue bruising waves waiting to stick to my belly as I fall
I fall by the ribbon, carried by the bird who bears the night sky on his wings
The fall isn’t sad, it’s not angry- it’s still, guided and quiet
The type of descend that could quench an arsonist’s thirst
To steady the nomad into a static heart
The speeding air that could leave scorched, a glacier
I was born on a Monday, the day I feel it the most
When my toes grow numb from the wet stone
My wrists dance in the suspense of flight
Tuesday morning I bring my attention back to my fingertips
The cardinal sings his song to the blood safe within my skin
And the Night Sky bird dives with his ribbon undone

Three made me sob on my floor until my lungs turned to stone and my wet face leaked down to my chest.
Pried at my ribs and dug in to find what I offered you, what you took so hastily.
In it’s place was something so heavy, so hard and lifeless.
A foreign object in the center of my being
It weighed down all of me, I could feel it creeping through my veins into my arms, legs, fingertips, toes.
It was cold and full of static.
I had to learn how to walk again,
My morning coffee came out stale,
My dinners turned into bottle-caps and buttons as I tried to pierce them with my fork
Eye contact clicked like south and south, north and north.
Did you give her what you took from me?

I keep rubbing my hands for heat
Trying to warm you but not melt you-
To hold you in any state I can
You're consistent as water
Obsession is an addiction that preys on the desperately distracted
A sure sign that I'm not healed