in dreams, her heels dig into the soft overlap
          between ocean and beach, an underbelly
she ebbs and flows to phantom melodies
          of spectral murmurs, un-broken.

she is adrift, with the liberation of seabirds
          amidst salty, swirling sea breezes
all gradients of blues poured over ice,
          and the cocktail of fluttering wings,     beating, pumping

                                  like an undamaged heart.

i. ablaze
no canvas can hold your portrait
all fine lines and smudges, 
like this crumpled paper heart can.

no acid earth blooms sickly flowers 
so vivid and surreal, 
like your lips formed falsities
hollow insignificances, haloed in sickening silence

no song croons heartbreak
quite as heart-wrenching as
these words you leave unspoken. 

and nothing lights up this darkness quite like 
the dazzling glow of how 
i burned up for you:

                               
ii. fluorescent
at night these empty streets whisper 
rumors of embers stirring, rekindling
the remnants of a great fire.

out of ashes i rise, singed and searing to touch.
lights and cigarettes line the paths forward
and backward; i wander them aimlessly.

nothing lights up this darkness 
quite like the glow of how
hundreds of streetlights burn for me.

iii. ceasefire
nothing lights up the darkness
quite like the glow of how
i illuminate from the inside out again 

no longer an all-consuming blaze—wild and destructive,
or a fluorescent light—the artificial brilliance a borrowed comfort 
i cannot call my own;

i uncover my heart to find light again,
not an uncontrollable fire, or the reflection of a stolen light,
but the halcyon glow of a ceasefire.

iv. light up the darkness**
and nothing, nobody can light up my darkness
or line my street sides
quite like i can.

as the night quells, soft and gentle,
the incessant humming in my head subdues to 
a murmured hush, and the white noise is but 
a grey    fog  veiling hazy promises and barbed fears.

the darkness seems to hold its breath as you say: look 
       at the meteors,        they fall so heavily tonight!
it is because we all placed our wishes on them.

yet i only see your tired orbit
set in the horizon of your stony shoulders;
like shooting stars burdened by wishful thinking,
you bow under a burden of universes:
          phantom hopes and frayed strands,
          as if you were afire from within,   the moon
      alight in lining of your skin.

tonight the waning moon’s gentle glow flickers
as if in stop-motion, like confused blinking.
in a lingering afterthought I find —

in solitude time is all-consuming,
and i am in an hourglass; time, a thief,
creating a vortex beneath my feet
and in solitude i find myself wishing desperately again.


the darkness is so softly suffocating as you say: look
at the meteors, they fall so heavily tonight!

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.

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.

but     can science explain why
people seem to feel
      especially insignificant         at night

can science tell us why
the moon    seems to smile sadly back at us
during our loneliest moments
and tell us ‘i know, i know’.


call a ceasefire.
extinguish     the burning city:

do not    fear    the night
it is filled with light we cannot see.