We have crossed paths without speaking before,
but this is very different.
I travelled as far as Riverside
before my heart went chasing your gravity.
I know.
I just haven't stopped loving you yet.
Please return the package to sender.

I woke with your laughter pounding in my eyes.
It was as if I had swallowed a grapefruit whole
and my breaths were determined to defeat each other.
Your name never did sit right on my tongue.
Your tongue, however, is another story.
I miss you with five of these useless senses
and I find myself dancing around your shadow
in dust you kicked up when you spoke our confession:
This is not meant to be.
How many of those fifteen hundred moons
did you look up to with longing?
How many stars witnessed our passion,
and on which of them did you wish to be free?
I can't look at you without tasting envy
of whoever will one day be home for your skin.
It is coating my tongue,
filling the awkward places where your name used to be.

have you ever looked at a word
looked at it again
and read it as if it were your first time
reading that word
as if all the other times you wrote "night"
the letters were somehow
different

I saw your picture on my nightstand
I don't believe we've met

Tomorrow I will write.
Tonight I will bleed,
Silently,
With a stomach full of table saws.

I guess I sort of started planning a life with you
and the hook that hurts the most
is the one swallowed the deepest
but I don't really know how far down it went
because I didn't know I went down that far
I have spent nights with search lights and helicopters
trying to figure out where I love you from
and the closest I've come is a pocket tucked next to my soul
maybe that's why you said you needed space
because I am in the business of swallowing hooks
and you're in the habit of running

I fear I might one day roll down these hills
without so much as a dimple to stop me.
Erosion is a powerful force of nature,
even more so of human kind.
These honey-tongued vipers with sandpaper suits
have quite the moving picture show.
Narrow shoulders offer far less resistance,
and it is easy swimming down stream.
I fear one day I will have filed my edges
to the point of no return.

Wife beater and faded jeans,
******* on the end of a straw.
Big tent circus, jumping through rings,
giving his excuse to the cops.

House full of magnets, face full of metal,
Pinball queen, she's the star of the ghetto.
But never can get that make up right
so the light tells tales of the yellow-bellied devil.

"Officer, please, I'm telling you the truth.
Swollen knuckles really ain't much proof.
We were drinking that 151
and I think she lost a memory along with the tooth."

Wife beater with faded genes
slurs words in the back of the car.
patriotic lights and he's off of the scene,

and she misses him already.
Stockholm girl took blows like confetti.
Every day's a party when you're married to the hulk.
She says he ain't so green in the morning.