We are what we are,
even when all we ever learned from life is
1. we bleed because we are born that way
2. how to play with fire
Danger is singing sweet and fierce between us.
Your eyes-
black like a raven,
black like the underside of a storm.
When we look at each other its a revelation.
Want holds me harsh and burning,
the air between us thrumming with this is mine.
In my dreams,
I chase the sound of you humming to violins,
completely blind.
In your dreams,
everything burns.
Things you hate,
things you love,
things that were never yours in the first place.
Sometimes,
through the roar and crackle,
you think you hear a song.
Tonight,
with the sky painted demon orange and unholy gray,
my heart taps out a frantic rhythm against the cage of my ribs.
Like a cypher,
like a language I only just started learning,
like a song I'm hearing for the last time.
Your smile is a powerful
terrible
wondrous thing,
slashed across your face like a scar,
white hot and hard and glittering.
Fear and joy and rage are the same,
after all.
We call it love in its worst,
most desperate form.
I'm here,
I've been here,
I love you.
And: you are burning all the time,
a star so slow you're almost backwards.
I am never looking anywhere else.
You are everything golden that I have never deserved,
have never been given,
will never know how not to ruin,
how not to hurt,
how not to destroy.
Now,
a list;
1. You, leaning your head into my hands, knowing I'll kiss you if you just close your eyes.
2. The impossible swell in my chest, foreign and aching and terrifying.
3. Your hands, in all my dreams, in all my realities, reaching into the unforgiving dark.

It was dark and snowing when we met,
flakes gone gold in the street lamps,
laying themselves to rest in your ebony hair.
The whole earth pausing in anticipation
for icy winter to give way to spring.
So now,
in the magic of packed earth,
in the things that dare come out of it;
you.
Surrounded by Irises
that are hauntingly dark.
Your hips,
draped chaotically in a white sheet
looking like a greek god.
Impossibly regal.
The trees sing your name when I pass;
even when you are not here,
you never leave me.
I am always thinking about you.
Many things are lost on me,
but not this;
the worn leather of your broken watch,
your piano hands,
the ink smudges on your skin.
How we forgive winter for destroying what's beautiful,
because we see a little bit of it in ourselves.

Our bare feet
in a carpet of yellow flowers.
You,
nearly asleep in the back of the jeep,
letting me slide your glasses off in the dark.
You are beautiful in your happiness,
for your naivety,
for your wit,
because of the way you make tea.
Every day you are kinder,
gentler,
and more magnificent.
Your sharp eyes
and your soft hands--
the quiet clink of your rings against each other.
I want you to kiss me and leave.
I want you to kiss me and stay.
I don't care if you're late.
I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.
So I learned how to live like this,
how to drink in a desert,
constantly on the cusp of summer.
Those restless, humid nights.
The whole sky is talking.
A long stairway,
a quiet glance.
A king, at sunrise.
The entire world thinks softly of you.
You are the love of everyone’s life.

Want is never a graceful thing.
Want stays hungry
and it always wins.
The way we love each other is explosive,
all bare feet burning on the sunburned concrete.
So,
again,
but this time, softer.
You are a culmination of beautiful things trying to manifest themselves.
Its unsettling,
this feeling is unsettling.
I don't like that this ley line,
this live wire,
this intangible thing dancing between us,
doesn't have a name.
Everything should have a name.
Nothing in the world worth having comes easy,
right?
Nobody told me it would be like this.
And it wasn't easy,
right?
But we already knew that.
We sort of even hoped for it.
The sticking and burning it takes to become good again
has always made me restless.
I like it,
I think,
especially when we dance,
especially when we sing.
And when they ask me why,
I will say you.
I will always say you.
So,
maybe this isn't the winning universe,
but we'll never stop trying, right?
How long could I live with those almosts?
Please,
tell me your name in a dead language.
I will say it like a hymn.
Like Achilles,
we'll take it one step too far.
I'll let it haunt me in broad daylight.
Love,
the past is full of ghosts.
Make them stay.

Make them mine.

You have never been anywhere but here.
All of your memories are mine,
too.
Sipping fanta from ceramic mugs,
curled up on the kitchen floor.
Theres supposed to be a lesson,
here,
about growing up
and growing apart,
but I am sunblind,
unseeing.
Even when the gowns come off,
when the train door closes,
I still care about all of this.
You will never not be a part of me.
Four years
and still,
still,
still,
the light bends around you,
reaching through the dark.
I am glad we got to do this together.
All this time.
I love you no matter what you become.

Pulling your blanket back on when it falls off in the night.
***** feet
and raspberry stained hands.
You, chewing on ice.
Me, sipping lemonade through red straws.
Moths that haunt the street lamps.
Dancing home alone,
ghosts that sing you to sleep,
old records on the table.
Riding your bike as the sun sinks sleepily at your back.
Being pressed up against the back door.
The seasons.
Winter.
Freedom.
Naked, terrible beauty.
Watching your back receding down the long, sunlit hall.
The two of us,
always running away from eachother.

I miss you in the mornings
when you teach the foxes to dance,
barefoot and all a trick of the light.
You are peculiar,
though all the best things are.
We may not break the bone,
but we do drink the marrow.
Yes, you say.
Wait for me, if nothing else.
Yes,
though I see how it pains you to admit it,
to spit it, to rip it out,
in spite of it being true.
You, whose only weapon is a shield.
You, who are free.
It is easy to forget
that Dionysus was the god of chaos,
too,
and that theres a bit of him in all of us.
We don't have to move the mountain.
We can live in the caves
and learn to be less real than we are.
We say new things in an old language.
The enemy ships land,
and we join them on the beach,
spinning round their fires,
singing war songs to each other's reaching hands.
How strange to be a part of something
and still be your own.