i am bone-tired and befogged with melancholia; i cannot wait to fall and bounce cheerlessly in a field of forlorn, arenaria flowers, all over the sunless forest floor. leave me be — a strange girl in a sleepy, run-down town. leave me be — a hopeless case in my own quiet apocalypse.

Someone mourns and I am terrified: my skin, shrinking — closing in upon myself, for how can they break and not break at the same time?

— “I am sorry for watching you watch someone else die”

1
i am the space expanding non-stop at the risk of losing history
and what remains of its stardust.
my sorrows expand with it; my vastness grows wider,
deeper by the day to accommodate
an uninvited houseguest.

2
i fear the act of going through my bones
like a bundle of endless, wistful letters;
some for burning.
some for throwing away.
some for breaking through
my ashen skin.

how can i be both limited and boundless —
it is no magic — just mundanely human.
the thought descends like poison eating at my backbone
until i am no more than a bygone, spineless caryatid.

3
yet again i take down the cosmos,
pick it apart
and in my hands, manage to turn it
into something distastefully prosaic —
turn it into a disassembled being.

all this wordless sadness has made me ancient. alien. unidentified.

4
i am the space expanding non-stop at the risk of losing history;
i have long stopped trying to make any sense to myself and
there is no greater joy
than to be a perplexity.

amid it all, i tiptoe back and forth
between the ice-thin parts of celestine silence
and the static ringing of incomprehensible poetry.

the ground where i stand on breaks;
i float with no direction.

5
i am the space expanding endlessly; i grow wider and deeper
to make room for vaster sorrows —
if only a sigh is enough to hold me
as i tear it all down. tear it all quietly. inward. once and for all.
if only a sigh is enough to hold me
as i implode in tragic,
breath-taking cosmic colors.

"I hear you—
your heartbeat against
mine right down
to my toes,
arrested and captive
by your sighs
calling for me—
Closer, come closer—
Just right there,
friction over static
in each hot
draw of breath,
in each flick
of our wrists,
in wanton whispers
of sweet nothings.
Mine. Be mine.

I feel you—
I feel your wanting
in the way your voice
shakes
as my name
escapes
your lips.
Consume me. Thoroughly—
enraptured as I am
by your ecstasy;
hands leaving nothing
untouched,
tongues leaving no inch
untasted.
Take me. Take me.

I reach out,
my very fingertips
over the blurs
of your incandescent
cheeks, flushed wildly
just as I
open my mouth,
narrate my desires,
lick my lips to prepare for
yours, past pixels—
I want more.
Keep your hungry
eyes on me
and your ears
to my rapture.
Give me more.

I let go.
Any and all
inhibition
lost in
frantic
thrusting
of the hips.
This craving,
intoxicating,
lightning
running through
my head.
Pink.
Blind *******.
Coming.
I’m *******.

Let’s get lost
in this high,
the echoing symphonies
of our lust
harmonizing languidly to
the feverish commands
our shameless orchestra
of sweating flesh
performs, this duet—
Yes, yes, YES—
Our risqué masterpiece
beyond the distance,
our bodies shaking,
our smiles satisfied.
The postlude comes
in sobering silence.

I promise you:
I’m the best you’ll ever have."

so you sew your melancholy shut –
pour your father’s ***
on the stitches
like you always do

i turn my back and bend over –
ache descending my backbone
where your kisses used to rest;
it recoils in instinct

as i keep on digging for the same mistakes
on skinfolds and chromatic bruises
and thin walls where i hung
my tendency to ache
scrubbed out of me like dead skin,
as i lie, washed, stripped, and tender
in these soft, celestine sheets;
i pepper bits and pieces of myself
to diffuse the hurting

but my pain is blinded;
yours, all-seeing
as i draw my three of swords
from my deepest deck of cards
but there’s already an epigraph
of your name on my clavicles
and you see how your all-elysian, moon-drenched lover
is all tainted, all this time,
and darling, how alive you felt
when you fell in love with this disaster
but the truth is staying in love
will always be your death.

and what i know to be deathless love
is now lost in our ghastly lights
and how we danced with liquid fire
long enough to feel it burn
but all roads lead to rome, darling –
all roads lead to ruin
and all the letters i wrote you are banners
burning in its cathedrals
as roman gods watched us
pick our limbs apart.

and do you think
we can love each other through this,
touch our way out,
love our way out of these

wars we waged —
burning houses,
mess we made
kisses dead in our stately wake
this love — this feeling
spilling like ether, leaving
squandered poems
all over the place.
had you known it all along
had you walked away?

but darling how alive you felt —
how alive we felt in love
but  one day you’ll call it crucifixion
and i’ll call it back  my death.

and we fall like sacred dust,
a bedlam of debris.
and i draw my three of swords:
dead-cold steel
and paper-soft sorrows.


do you think we have it in us to love each other out of this?

i let go of myself mid-air,
suspended like a plastered sun goddess —
i long to be smaller. younger. incorporeal
but grief is royal mantle dragged in the mud,
draped on my shoulders, down to my limbs:
like a pair of sunbeams gone astray
and the sun has long left without
so much as a sorry letter.

still, i feel its hands
creeping to the parts of my lungs left untouched.
its glare spreads like rust,
telltale in the daylight glow.

soon, i will implode from all this alien warmth
like a colony of bats, a revolution for the dusk.
soon, the sky will recognize this ancient sadness
throbbing inside a mortal body
like a rejected ***** wanting to escape.

i let go of myself mid-air:
vivid and ugly under the softest parts of sunlight –
all dying in the dusk in slowest motion;
it washes over me. anoints. screams out in mourning
screams out ‘no’.

but i have taken my flights and fall.


i let go of myself mid-air.