teach me what desire’s about,
make me your celestial creature,
consume me until death do us apart.

the hazy moon dipped into silver
the glinting stars sank into gold,
and it was as if you were plucked from the pool of darkness
and plunged into the face of the earth

the constellations on your celestial body
the supernova glow of your being
is the starlight everyone needs

stardust fell down from her honey brown eyes
and kissed the neck of her wooden guitar
and inside her aquamarine gloom lies
truly the most ethereal gold by far
and for every single shaky breath
is worth one hundred dollars to a fool
and for every fragile thought of death
is cut exactly like a priceless jewel
her hurt worn like a 1950s fur
as she licks the rotten fruit of Eden
they rearrange her life all around her
into their own holy flower garden
she, seraph, looks up to the heavens gates
remembers how it felt, plummeting to hate

I pin the anemic bodies
of poems
to the bed of palm
like they are cadavers
waiting to be
d  i  s  s  e  c  t  e  d.

This is the
only
way
I know to
make sense of things,
each enjambed line
a heartbeat closer
to understanding this
sadness
(or letting
go
         of
it).

I gawk at the contents
of the shelves
that live amongst the
curdling strips of wallpaper.
Yellowing mason jars,
each containing some
tragic specimen swimming in  
formaldehyde tears--
Plath's last breaths;
Sexton's paper cut fingertips;
Van Gogh's severed flesh.

The sight of this
ghastly collection
sends the scars on my wrists
into a spiralling ache.

I once made the mistake
of assuming poetry
would instantaneously
exorcize the aching--
it only brought me closer.

But I must remember
that bleeding is the last stop
on the route to mending;
it's gotta hurt
before it can heal.

So I write,
bear the sting
of these words
as they stitch together
the tattered patchwork
of my heart;
until the scars meet
at the pinnacle
of my anatomy,
crisscross,
bright constellations
flowering from the darkness,
starlit tulips
that shake the
sorrowed dew drops
from their rain-torn petals,
celestial hieroglyphs
waiting to be read--
This is your history;
not your future.