your hands remind of a rainstorm

so broken and beautiful, you cleanse everything you touch

when it pours, i always step outside

and pretend that something other than the water is breaking through my skin

when you wash me clean you are as real as rain

i spilled ink on a blank page

and it spelled out all the things i could never say to you

on the phone, your voice sounds like it’s dying

and i hope that in the black of night

the telephone lines will carry the unspoken things in the spaces of my sentences

i have a gaping whole in my chest when i think of things that could have been

i bet you would have tasted like streetlights and rain that night

if i would have kissed you under the lamp post when i dragged you down to meet me

you would have felt like the cracks in the pavement under my fingers

you were the alleyways and the fog and the bricks that kept the buildings together when the sky broke through

i look at your hands and your lips and i think they would feel better than any glorious and screaming dawn

i wish i could tape you back together but our bodies are so far apart

i can feel it getting colder

i watch lovers turn to strangers

and it puts things in perspective

i didn’t believe in ghosts until i could still feel you after you were gone

i put the kettle on but it never goes off

and the calendar is thinning like the time

since i last touched you

looked at you

i usually hate change

but it’s you that’s changing these days

and i love you

it’s all so conflicting

my hair is growing longer

you said i looked like rapunzel  

but that was when our clothes stuck to our bodies

and now the leaves are falling

and i’m left clutching these books

trying to find what i need in them

***** the novels i read at midnight

it’s you i want

i’m putting on sweaters

i dont mind the weather

but i used to stay warm with you

and things hurt worse than they used to

replaying the things you breathed into me so many months ago

if you wondered why i never used your name

in those poems that i wrote

it’s because i used love as an excuse to be shy

i’m struggling to find hidden meanings in forced glances

but life is not a mystery and we aren’t all just stories

i wash the blood off my hands

to get rid of the guilt

but the bruises from the fall remain

and my knees look like they would break in half

if you looked at me again

let’s just sit in the shallows of our souls

and maybe you will trace my skin

onto parchment paper

run your fingers down my veins

my spine will forget about your lies

and remember your lips

i press your heartbeat against my chest

to feel you alive

because you don’t laugh anymore

i need to certify your existence

you feel like a ghost

slipping through my fingertips

the thunder in the clouds

matched the pounding in my head

i had nothing left to give you

when you left me there for dead

i will turn to dust here

in this fading place

my skin smells of metal and second hand smoke

books of religion and poetry and fiction line the walls

some lay open on the floor like i do some nights

a naked ******

i am not wedding-dress pure like my father thinks i am

and i waited for you

with all your missing words

always eight letters late

as you were off learning new languages

German, Dutch, Italian

do not speak to me in them

my roots do not match theirs

i lingered just enough

my fingertips graze the places you touched

and memories seeped from the floorboards

the evidence of your presence is fading

i just want to sin again

to finally feel normal

graveyard boy, you are all skin and bones
i cut myself on your cheeks until i am red and raw
and your heart bursts out of your chest by the marble stones

bones boy, the night seeps from inside you as the sun goes down
i count your ribs up one by one and stretch myself over your skin
cover me from this haunting that rises from your gray eyes

blood boy, you are red and screaming under flesh
i can see your spidery veins inside of your wrists
warm and speeding when your hands touch my throat

ghost boy, tie me up with ropes and lower me to the ground
let me be hollow with you and fill the spaces with silence
the moon will be gone once we have made it far enough

i read your body like a bible

kissed your lips like a prayer

then burst into hymns

screaming confessions in the dark

like some sort of sin

you don’t believe in saints

and you don’t believe in god

but i swear when you hold me

your eyes are greater than all cathedrals

and they tell me you believe in miracles