Sun-crested eyes

Bold, low lungs

Digging to the core

Of the earth



Towering edifices

Hesitating a little

Swooning to the ends



Of my hair

Your lips taste like

Blue carnations on Sunday mornings

Smell like

Freshly sharpened coloring pencils

From that expensive crafting store

Your eyes feel like

Dozens of swans’ feathers



Making up the fluff in my dreams

I am the pressed

rose in your book

of secrets



The shocking color that

pulses through your

veins



The grey skin that

slithers off your

perpetually dry fingertips



I am the scratch of

the pen being

used as we speak



The way the calloused

mountains look

when you drive me



home

Bad noise circling the charcoal

Around your thickly lashed eyes

Your desk is as cluttered as

Your head

Graphite scars lining your wrists

Empty sketchbooks waiting

For their own life stories

For the wind's influence to sweep

Lovely things across their pages

You say you're an artist,

But you hurt entirely too much

For your watercolor heart to not be

Don't worry about the past,
They throw their speech at you

But you worry more about the future

And how "art students don't make enough money"

Or

"You'll never amount to anything doing that"

And those thoughts are what



Positively kills you

Casting lungs into the sea

Suffocating beneath touching glances

Caress each troubled thought

Wait for the breathing to come back

Normal again



Stretch the edges outwardly

Breaking sea glass eyes

Secret places in the dark

Wait for the breathing to come back

Normal again



Defined flames

Of cascading salt

In my lungs

Wait for the breathing to come back



Normal again

Pressing coal into

Pairs of lungs          

Shoveling spoons of

Fresh-boiled sadness

Down the throats

Of wilting flowers



Clasping cold fingertips

Around the veins

Of already choking fish

That swim in your blood



Sharpen the stakes

Of an older kind of love

That burns still



Beneath you

It's not the way you look at the cleaning lady

and how her hands move while winding the vacuum's cord.

It's more like the way you ask her

what her name is.

And she answers with a tone

that tells you more than just the answer you desired.

Her story is far different from what you'd imagine,

her lungs sharing each breath with you.

You asked her for her name,

you got a lifetime of regrets.

A few broken heart strings

like the keys of an old piano—



their sound soft, but not quite manageable.