The city was hungry. A mewing came from an alley. A hollow exchange.
The innards of the district had been gutted by libertine sons.
We were scared of the silence, so we filled it with shootings, and lynchings, and stabbings, and rapes.
You came an empty reflection. It was the night before the bombs fell. I remember the way my atoms shifted. You lying there in the morning.
We fell into one another, like rabid dogs at corpses.

Limbs lined the streets.
You were distant that day. I broke ******* climbing over a fence, and lined them with the rest.
The radio tower looked abandoned.
You told me three years later you didn’t care either way. I walked you to the bridge and watched you swim the Styx.
I’d never cared from the start.

The world ended soon after.
The moon’s belly cracked, guts spilling onto the earth.
Children pelted one another with flesh. Parents stood in doorways, smiling.
The swell stretched infinitely, reaching neither peak nor fall.
I fell asleep on your grave, nestled in the cold of yesterday’s ache.

Waiting
on the front porch
going through
the newspaper,
sipping on green tea.

My heart
is looking out
into the distance
in search of
the shadow of you.

Your pounding heartbeats,
On my chest,
Like gentle flutters,
Of caged butterflies.
A pure ecstasy.
A pure emotion.
A pure devotion.
Once!

what have you done to me.
i let you undress me with your eyes,
slowly and reassuringly.
and then aggressively with your hands,
undoing the buttons on my shirt
and unzipping my jeans
nearly ripping the fabric right from under me.

pulling me across the bed
breathing heavily into my ear,
i'm remembering why
i ever called you mine in the first place.
we decorated these walls with our fingerprints
and they remain as memories of every time we've touched.

now why you?
is it your scent, is it your skin?
the way the marks you leave on my stomach
feel like you every time i touch them?
its you that i want, its you that keeps me here
when i should be with whom i claim to love.

when you were mine,
it was a perfect dream,
we ran through the war with not a scratch
not a dent in our skin.
we got out of the mess,
accompanying each other through the storm.

I should have let you sit in the driveway,
I should have never let you walk through the front door.
Why couldn't you have left me alone in this room
without your taunting glares
begging for the affection i crave so much.

I swore i wouldn't do this.
I swore i wouldn't kiss your neck again,
i swore i wouldn't make you want me.

but I gave in.
so here you are
once again.
you're lying on my bed,
and i'm on top of you.

Something I've observed
and maybe you've noticed it too
that your dance is always the same
with steps well-tread, familiar;
a frown,
a concerted effort to hold that cigarette in place
before the resolution;
you sit back,
always one ankle resisting on the opposite knee,
contented.

Your lungs are those who inhaled the precious
cigarettes nicotine,
But tell me why I was the only one being poisoned
My already decaying heart
Taking on more damage
By the toxic lies
Your taunted tongue told

Brain is reporting effected too
Just another ***** stimulated by you
Even though our time is through
My bloodstream still craves your toxins,
Exactly like the way
Your lips crave the end of your cigarette,
It's really a shame you never wanted me as bad as that.

i crave your skin; your touch
i crave your hands
your smile
your eyes and how they crinkle when you laugh
i crave the me i am when i'm with you
i crave your lips; how they'd feel on mine
i crave your affection
i crave for you
and that's all i can do
crave

                                                                 r.n