With the last ounce of daylight
   A quiet wish takes flight

Like the beating wings of dragon flies
   Faster than a heart can hold
   Clearer than a clouded sky
   With dusklit distant humming hues

Here is the wish intent on finding you
   Wherever you are in this storied eye

I cannot see you
   Though I wish
   (To find)

ii.
You are in the living room at dusk
Haphazard towers of moving boxes rise around you
The furniture has been dismantled and
You divert your gaze to the underwhelming formation
Of cardboard and tape
As your mother screams and throws the cat across the room

In retrospect, it reminds you of an album cover
For some emo basement band
A collage of childhood in hues of brown
Or a glimpse of red flannel
Cardboard castles, a little boy
Holding a paper sword
Taken on a disposable camera in 2004
And reappropriated for it’s nostalgia in 2014

The boy you caught is not amongst your rescue party
You veil your disappointment poorly as you climb into the passenger seat
And it filters through the holes in the cloth like grey light
You blame the fatigue on your mother alone
Though it isn’t entirely her own

watching the same collage video on a loop of
leaves drying up
snow melting under the surface of a sweating floor
you leap up to grab me but there's only a cloud of moonlight coming through your window
you feel the arresting tackle of all the butterflies leaping out of your chest with rapid eye movement like the eyelash kisses you would give the mirror
the fluttering turning their wings into  heavy blades that leave a pinkish glow on your chest

my name was worn out that spring and you never learned to turn the light on at night

My finest dusk was the watermelon kind,
When bats skitted in the shortcomings of light,
And on a picnic bench in the cool June of outside,
I felt the dogwoods and pines and other apple-greens
Fidget with insects in the newness of night,
I felt the only grace was
The watermelon kind, and though the world was newly
Dying in its freshness, the pulp squirmed
From my bloated, gleaming lips like
Blubber split from a whale’s side.

I L U like my ***** clothes
Love being forgotten
On my bedroom floor

I L U like chores love the
music that helps them
forget they're chores

I L U like ***** dishes
Love hot showers and
the other side of the sink

I L U like I love spilling
Salt, and warding off the evil
By tossing over my shoulder

I L U like I love
Breaking rules about
my own supposed
Bulletproof non-Superstition

I L U like black cats love
Bad luck, cause to them,
It's just Friday, you know?

I L U like the hot dog bun
Loves staring at the beef patty,
Wishing "if only, if only"

I L U like bread loves
Being forgotten till we're really hungry
And then we're all ungrateful, like
"Hey bread, you remember us?"
And bread is high above us, like
"Always."
Not even a hint of scorn

I L U like the first time I saw
Jurassic Park, The dinosaurs
Were real enough for me,
Even sans chicken feathers, and
Who needs modern science anyways
when love has no fossil records?

I L U like the weather loves
Surprise parties.
I L U like painful
surprise party memories love
being forgotten on my bedroom floor

I love you like Mayflies love living,
oh so briefly, once a day, every single day,
Chapter one to chapter none

I love you like mayflies love themselves,
brevity and all, stirred by nothing but
the glow of Dawn's light,
Dead by dusk, the Mayfly never fully
completes metamorphosis, so it dies
in complete incompletion,
but that's okay.

It drank the salt ocean,
it breathed the living air,
And that's how I want to L U