your eyes meet mine in a collision of universes,
our lines of sight intersecting in a cross space
of foggy despairs and moon-watching    from well-bottoms
your hand   is     hesitant       on my face.

in the eclipse of your searching eyes i can see reflected
endless galaxies and the lunar phases,
and in mine you looked, only to find black holes
emptier than our words and as warm as our embraces.

i put all i had into you but you were still empty;
your eyes were enraptured by an unmapped space to explore,
while mine were fixed, grounded to you:

this is      a truth so loud we can't ignore.

my small frame always had no place in your wandering eyes.
you dream of unmapped universes – endless seas and abstract love.
but i was stumbling in the little things:
        all of our moments and our lack thereof.

you waltzed through the days, the months and the years
you sought sunsets and moon phases in an endless chase
but i was left begging after the seconds,
for another moment in your embrace.

to you i am but a dismissive sentence in your explorer's log,
               a grain of salt in a desert of sands.
but to you i will dedicate stanzas and lines –
all the prettiest adjectives for our abandoned wonderlands.

see a penny
don't pick it up
dried, brown leaves on pavement
avoid them all costs
pick dandelions,
but not their petals
but most importantly,
be rid of the sorry's,
if they're not genuine

when you smile only your lips move
you’re a beautiful portrait of starched shirts and graceful misery
a whole tragedy told in your bared teeth and narrowed eyes.

when the soft moonlight runs down your face
all i see is plastic flesh and fine lines
jagged edges, discolored hollows—a broken sort of beauty.

the cigarettes and alcohol run electric in your veins;
you are gunpowder and grenadine, razor
    blades and tar. sticky and corroding, sharp and broken.

you wear your jaundice like a punishment
a rotting underneath a supple olive complexion,
from the neglected depths of your weary body.

you are a child with an old man’s scars.
your lost youth poisoned with a misery so heavy
it’s as if you've seen the world and lived through it twice.

you inhale the wild air and you breathe out toxins:
everything about you is decaying and rotting and dying
but in your erratic pulse i hear a muted plea: don’t let me die.

so i lean over, and into you
and let you take in the oxygen of my lungs
and the lingering mint on my tongue.

breathe me:
let me save you from drowning
in lungfuls of nicotine numbness and hallucinogen delusions.

for you in full blossom, i inhale
and exhale the ephemeral, dissonant beauty of your mortality.

we are two anarchists beckoning each other
with alluring eyes full of longing, so sticky-sweet.
caught in the trance of each other’s honeyed promises,
we embrace with the elegance of clashing armies.

come closer, let my wandering fingertips find
            a home       in stretches of taut skin, valleys    
            and crevices,
                                     coy smiles, igneous eyes; can i entice
                                     you to dance?

but where there was skin she finds only armor plates,
       where there was vulnerability, only hardened resolve.
       where our thorned bodies join crimson blossoms bloom:
flowers of anarchy flourishing in the eye      of the hurricane,
the peculiar beauty of us.

we make the portrait of orderly discord.