i have inherited pandora's careless melancholy, her tiny box of regrets, her white-washed, quiet horrors and terrible decisions — staining like a memory passed down from her reckless hands to my old, ***** claws, digging for something raw, something parasitic, something miserable, something always goes wrong beneath my ribs. it wants out, like a beast, a misplace fragment, an aphid. and these days turn their heads away — blur themselves blind before my many blunders.

before the wrath of a false god, will my bones ever learn the art of being unapologetic?

I know I've said it five hundred times
I hope five hundred is okay
Five hundred words,
Five hundred ways,
to say I love you in a day.
Five Hundred words  that still fall short
Can't think of one to say
Five Hundred words and still not one that truly can explain.

How I feel
and how its real
How I'm supposed to say,
How you make the moon shine,
How you make me flat-line
When you make the birds ring and the trees come to life.

The beauty in your smile
The jewels in your eyes
When you sing with your voice
With the stars in the night

Asking myself where does the time go?
And how you make the breeze blow.

When I dream of a future with you by my side
With our dog in the picture and
these corny *** rhymes
With you on my chest and your hands in mine

Where I'll confess my love
another five hundred times.

will my hands ever forget the habit of clawing my own wounds for warmth? i lay my vulnerably human skin on sun-dried poems written to breathe, breathe, breathe in — breathe through january's oppressive cold.


i breathe out a mouthful of asphyxiated flowers

Without so much as a burst of white light, without so much as a beclouded face, lingering — I want to go quietly now, like sawdust in a country road — like seafoam under a gray sunset.

My mind insists on leaving.

like fallen flowers, i am
weary under the subtle noise of a rushing, babbling brook;
a death, quietly scenic
as i go back to dust.
i left my body rotting in a prairie paradise,
here it decays to gray
under the bruised indigo sky.

a ghost writes her poem in silence, in small, made-up synapses,
and the wind sweeps it away.

Here we are as unclaimed lights fall into the room. Here we are with better names, old letters peeling after the other. Here we are, now made of changing lights and indigo dreams. In the very last month and for the first time, I claim the body of an Egyptian lad and you are the sun god, washing over me like a brand new day. For the first time, December doesn’t feel like choking on poppy blossoms. For the first time, December is freeing as scattered pastel lights.

For the first time, my love, December rests on my skin — and it doesn’t hurt.

one more poem
if I may try
just one
more
before I lay
down
and die
for I have cried
some silly words
to rhyme, recite
rewrite
the absurd
I’ve barely been able
to live with myself
let alone
with my thoughts
and no one else
I’ve wrestled
and fought
most of life in my mind
now I empty myself
of my final line
one more written
last one read
so you can bury me now
alone
inside my head

I listen to your heart
Beat in rhythm to the rain
Pouring out somber melodies.
The world drapes silent,
Where your eyes sing
Meteor shower wonders.
Sometimes,
It feels too much to grasp,
Tied to an endless
Invisible string around my palm.

Forgive me if the fatigue means
my eyes cross
and I lose the thread of your beauty,

it’s in your words, see?
Always has been,
a bit like me

And now my head nods,
we’ll say in affirmation
as you’re a patient person,

though my snort-start awake
will give me away

I’m desperate to stay awake with you,
but these days, y’know?
These days.