in the youth of the morning
a glass figurine grasps rays of light
the sun graces his soft contour
radiant colors bouncing off the
***** surface of the table
the dust does not near his skin
his lineament is something i saw once
in a dream, across the ocean.
do i brave those tumultuous waters?
to what end?
so that my fingertips may keep their distance?
so that we may breathe the same air?
so that our eyes may burn under the same sun?
my wistful dreaming knows
not reason but the desire
to witness the distant diamond
glinting like the stars
that beg me to drown in hopeless ventures
yet my lungs would happily fill with saltwater
if only my skin could know
the touch of an untouchable

in another lifetime
we stand grounded in perfect heat
your gaze keeps me from drifting
and you hear my whisper above the
roar of the swelling throngs
we feel no pain now,
though our cheeks once knew
the salt of tears and blood
yet you were there,
you washed my face
and i yours
because you never once doubted
what i looked like beneath
and once our feet hit the ground,
we are here to stay,
fixated on an astronomical alignment
two stars, illuminated:
you and i

but in this lifetime,
you burn too bright
an imperfect heat that scathes the skin
gravity pulls me from my dreams
and keeps me orbiting around reality
we drift slowly past,
brushing briefly, only
long enough to believe i know you
but in a moment, when
time and space disagreed
our propinquity lasts a lifetime

when he grows up
he'll be a chocolatier, he supposes.
yes, a chocolatier.
what dim light holds money
compared with the brilliance of cocoa's richness?
many times he traded a crisp dollar bill
to the cashier, for a Hershey's bar —
the cashier, he knew, had drawn the shorter straw.
he could not understand big people
in their big buildings
with their big cups of coffee,
aching with bitterness all day long.
what they needed, after all, was a bar of chocolate.
what do you like to do? they'd ask him, those big bitter people.
sometimes he wondered the same thing —
what did they like to do?
did they like to sit at their big desks
and hope for bigger checks, someday?
he knew what he liked to do.
“i like to make people happy,” he told them,
“and i like to eat chocolate.”
they laughed at him, sometimes.
he didn't think it was funny,
but he liked to see them smile.
"would you like some chocolate?" he'd ask.
they would look confused, almost
like they weren't sure he was talking to them.
they said sure, they wouldn't mind some
chocolate, and he
would give those big people
a little piece of chocolate.
but their eyes would ask him what their
mouths would not:
why?
he was practicing, he said,
to be a chocolatier.

at the tips of my fingers
and in the palms of my hands
on the backs of my eyelids, where sleep should be
between fanciful flower petals, dead since long ago
upon the fabric of my dress, where your hand met my waist
within books and doors slammed shut, a restless cacophony
from falling rain, polluted by quixotic aspiration
under the breath swept from my mouth,
in a prayer that i am not in love with you

You emerged from the breaking dawn
glittering to rival the rising sun.
Molten gold dripped
from the tips of your fingers;
shimmering dust encrusted your footprints.
Had our paths not crossed,
I'd not be frozen here;
a statue of fool's gold,
the work of your touch.
But I'm stuck in your kingdom,
watching the golden age
waiting until you wash your hands in the river
and come back to me —
you are cursed with the Midas touch,
and I am cursed for making you king.

he warmed her edges until she
caught flame,
so she might burn bright like
him.
he splintered her spine and
peeled words back from pages,
flung them to the wind.
now the pavement is wet with
the shreds of her,
flushing away the last vestiges
of who she was.
she was once a book
with his name written in red
in every chapter.
each of the stories shared,
cautionary tales
thrown on the ground and
trampled under careless foot —
but all at once,
in a furious storm, he
tore himself away,
and even she cannot make sense
of what is left behind.

i wanted you
to reach beneath my ribs
and touch my heart
but your fist fractured my feeble bones
your jagged fingernails scraped
the insides of my lungs
my nerves screamed but i
could not find the breath to protest
as your hands ripped vein after vein
my cracked lips shaped forgotten words
but you weren't looking at me
you were admiring your scarlet skin
when you caught my lip between
your teeth i
could ******* own blood
you promised me this was
how it was supposed to feel
but when you pulled back you
left my heart hanging
in my ribboned chest
it was months until i
learned to believe that
i would ever find
breath there again