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.

Enveloped in the warmth of wet skin
Salty fingertips grasping onto sticky arms, legs
Hair hot with amber and vanilla
Cheeks pink, lips pinker
Stolen air is sweeter
Sweeter breath is stolen
Part, slide, gasp and shudder
Breathe, breathe, breathe,
Melt.

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

Inhaling oakmoss and tobacco
Sparkling ivory with the structure of ebony
She swirls her glass, wrapped with crimson talons
Toes pointed in patent leather, wrists cuffed in white lace
The fire crackles a warning but it glows too enticingly
I feel comfort and fear, scorched and glacial
I am the arsonist's thirst- nomadic, static
If tonight isn't the peak of my existence
I am the world's luckiest soul

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

I sit in the bath and try to make amends
I tell my body that I'm sorry, that I love her and want to nurture her
And it feels sharp and rude sliding down my tongue.
I look at my flesh and hold her gently, holding my hands back from pinching and grabbing and pounding in frustration.
I love you and I'm sorry
Please stick to my tongue and dissolve sweetly.
Please mean it sometime soon.
All I want is to hold all of my bones to my heart
Keep them inside and insulate them from the cold.
My brain split in two
One side holds flowers
The other armed with arrows
Point me in the direction of resolution
Pull back and launch with force
Don't make me choose it-
I probably won't.

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?

Why is it that love is so easily confused,
With a multitude of other experiences?
Perhaps we identify love as the feelings we hope are truly it,
Through the fear of acknowledging them for what they truly are.
Obsession, desperation, a projection and dependence of self-worth?
We dodge calling the *****, a *****.

If I have ever held your hand, know that I still hold it in my heart
If I have ever dried a tear from your cheek, I still feel it on my skin.
If you’ve ever burned me- I still remember the warmth before the pain.
Change the locks, I still hold the old keys to every place I once called home.
I can never bring myself to understand why we make strangers from ex-lovers
We mourn for the death of who we wanted those people to be,
And lie to ourselves when asked if we broke our own hearts.

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.

You didn't mean to do this
I was possessed by the sparks, ignited despite the odds
In that moment- I would have given you my entire soul
I would have merged into your skin and lived there forever
I would have breathed in every last one of your exhales,
And thanked you for the gift of the heat you didn't make for me
I would have burned down the house I grew up in,
If it meant we could put up a tent
Thank god you didn't let me, because I would have,
And I would have lost it all

You are the splitting peel of the clementine in my hungry hands
You are the rogue candle spark that makes my heart skip a beat-
Settling into the carpet and dimming just to soothe me.
You are the urge to press my foot to the floor-
As my favourite song comes on in the car.
You are also the song.

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