under the skin all i am is blood and thought
forming into a lesser sum of the whole
fitted between floorboards and motel rooms
between clumsy words and continental souls
this is a tired, drippy saying my mother would repeat from the tongue, like a song but not like a poem, just a saying
"love this strong has to be domesticated"
and i wish i didn't exist outside of my head; i only wish to be a vacancy of thought
and i've bruises on the insides of my palms from it; easily hidden and slowly mended

i exhaled what was left of me into what was left of you
spilling into streets, into changing hands
my mind stays on this, the stinging of distance and the fit of your voice in my ears
the thought is without heat, without body, yet i know i am alive to it
alive to the dripping of the rain running between tired gutters and to the thaw of orbiting debris in both night and day
but i am most alive to the way you dissolve me, the simple fact that my astronomy is yours

we built a god from bruises and good-byes
nightly, i prayed, not to him, but to you and the thunder in your ribcage that i felt every time you held me
you said it was a side effect of the creaks in my floorboard and the shadows in my arms but honestly
i could always feel the motion there, only it feels dead now
this isn't love; this is me haunting my own body
this is stale music and trembling lips between life and soul
and you whisper,"it's late you should go home. it's late, please go home"
but we both know that this way we will remain

it's been weeks and i'm left ******* at the pockets of air around your neck
gravity slows down time and i'm in the collar of my shirt
we're floating from each end of reality
and i'm stuck orbiting your thoughts
i know that the pain has drained beneath our feet and to the bottom of the earth
but you were still the last star to go cold
and my eyes have melted into my skull; my veins intertwine with the
bed sheets where you kissed my eyelids shut
and i'm trying to write motions into headache poetry
like feeding life into death

sooner or later, we all unhinge
only i never thought it would be before the space in your arms ran out
and the poems i'd stuffed under my mattress had started giving me back problems
iced over hands can't hold pencils properly, i've found
and you can't sleep through a cold
in the end it all leaves my thoughts scraping on pieces of you
and with an overwhelming sense that i never had anything to offer you

flowers have started growing where you last slept on my bed
rain on the inside of your eyelids and i know i'm the reason
and i'm the one questioning if i was ever enough
at night i can still see the stars huddling around your feet
you tell me you still love me and i say it back but it's all one volume
at night your finger still curls around my belt loop
and you go skyward leaving my fingerprints glued to my eyes

there's a constellation of glass shards in the back of your car
tessellate them into a few sleepy cigarettes
within a few drags
the night and your room became the universe
and i'm forgetting to say that it was anxiety
that passed me the blanket to give you
we're tucked into a few comforters; i'd like to stay that way
but when you wake up, you still have to break the icicles that formed between us and i can't say i ever fell asleep