in depth,
the moon settles,
behind a quiet black,
stretching like a sea beneath her,
and though she sleeps,
she casts so much sound.

freckled there in the sky
they tremble,
bursting flashes of white;
and hopeless below,
fingers trace,
eyes shutter closed,
while the crickets hum,
the trees rustle,
and the being of time
erases itself momentarily

Each binding catastrophe, enveloping us, like burning wood, like his hands,
Grooves filled with rock, with dirt, with my blood. The smell was dead.

And crescent, the imprints in my skin, like half moons. His nails dug into me like fire trying to die.

There was no meaning in the sky, it held no purpose, no barter to our senses. It was a pure blue. Untainted.

I felt so silently. He felt so eagerly; loud. I wondered if it was his mother or the dark that taught him to speak. Like sparks, reaching as arms into your body, and burning with electricity - his tone carried boulders, rumbling down your lungs to settle in the fear.

He scared me.

Yet.

I felt.

I felt.

The same as when i lay like unfinished art beneath him, or a ruined canvas; spilled paint, soaked edges. He looked at me like he did not know me. Or he did not know himself around me.

And when I said his name, it was a foreign word, an unknown language. I spoke in tongue. He spoke with his fist.

Sascha. Sascha.

I started to fall in love with the mix of black and blue, and how it shaded itself into purple galaxies, streaming down my arm like poured milk over fresh ink. These bruises were more than pain, they were his name, tattooed in cursive on my flesh.

Travesty knelt in the form of an opened grave. His eyes were closed. His skin was white.  I placed my open palm onto the cold casket surface and I did not feel him, not at all.

anchorage alaska, 9:40 a.m
the mountains, 9:41
the dead trees, 9:42
the snow, 9:43
your face, woven into the scenery, 9:44

it is beginning to hollow,
the night, kindling it's daggers around the day,
and i tell you, so silent
as to not wake our voices yet,
"the train is coming."

you are on the boulders,
naked feet,
shoes lost in the shore
and you look at me and smile
and my eyes crease,
like thin wrinkles,
like wire, pulling them shut,
and i smile back.

i cannot think.
the train is approaching,
rumbling over the tracks
like a thunderstorm,
like an avalanche.
and you open your mouth to scream,
but it comes out a roar.

like accumulating rain
in the groove of a gutter,
you're there beside me
and we're both screaming.

and I can feel myself lurching
towards the rails
because at 9:55,
as the train passes us,
i look over
at the naked boulders
at the rising tide
at the burning tracks
and you're gone.

The night wrapped its skeletal arms
back around your ghostly form.
the rain had stopped,
the gutter was clean,
and everything
was a miserable empty

flown over myself, the shedding feathers from black birds that follow me;
my own fingers, pluck the ends from out of my skin,
as the sky shifts,
as the bristling of dead trees offer no shelter,
no warmth from their bony arms.


it's easy to follow silence
i keep her nestled in the hollow of my throat & while it swims into my lungs
all i can do is float
on the squeaking mattress,
against his cold, huge hands
holding me there,
cornered around vibrational gasps.

my body is corroding
my limbs are severed
the insides are flowing out of me
like rushing water.

like, the tub,
filling with pink.
Its shaking stomach rocking me against rusting porcelain.


They sleep among the dead.
I sleep in their duggen-up graves.

when i was born
my mother said
it felt as if a new mathematical state had come into being
       new creature.
              new possibilities
              
when my grandfather died
my mother said
it felt the same- as she sat in that old room, his spirit slipping into a new form
       old creature
              new possibilities

delicacy
your blooming self
smeared with
golden sun
accessorized with
dried dandies
wrapped around your wrist

i saw you
milk skin
back sinking into open earth
eyes open
searching
hoping
longing

and i turned then
face tucked inside my arm
and i spoke
mouth muttering whispers

and you,
you didn't speak,
not at all
you just laid there
like a ghost

the fragile morning seeps
her shadowing sunlight into my morning coffee cup, staining the walls of its home dark.
i sip on her effortlessly, her warmth a flowing melody against the chaotic prance of my pulse.
I close my eyes & let her wander.