Moloch and I made a fort last winter
with fallen branches and broken splinters.
It started to rain and he cried
said, “this is what it’s like on the other side.”

The sky shattered and the pieces
fell to Earth. The empty spaces
poked holes into the ground.
He was weeping, but there was no sound.

Fallen angels in notorious graces
rose from the mist to kiss our faces
lightly they tugged us by the wrists
towards empty spaces and grey mists.

He followed them, he floated down
wore roses and thorns fashioned in a crown
I watched him die and started weeping
my mother found me alone in the forest sleeping.

Wake up to me wrapped
around you like wool.
Keep me trapped
in the gravity of your pull.

I want you to want me
like the waves long for shore.
I need you to need me
down to the lava of your core

There's a distance
in the closeness of our embrace.
When you lean in to kiss me
all I feel is the space.

I want to want you
like the waves long for shore.
I need to still need you
down to the lava of my core.

I.
Today I read I poem
I write next year
about how love gave way to fear,
how goodbye still replayed in my ear.

II.
You called last night
to ask me over.
I warmed in spite of myself
and, by dawn, became your untimely lover.

I clattered into the room still reeking of cologne and tonic when he caught me. He rolled his head back and yawned, identifying me as the menace of his perfect Sunday morning. He was sprawled across the bed and had probably waited there all night for my belated arrival. In daylight, his eyes were almost human, a shade of blue usually reserved for smoothed sea-glass or a Montana sky, but I remember there was something particularly startling about the way he looked at me that morning: as if he had stood witness to my actions and disapproved. I shook off the feeling; what use is judgment to an animal? I closed the curtains and pulled him close to me, “I’m glad you have no voice to tell my secrets.” His tail twitched.

Old pub
Out in the suburb
Broken men
talk about way back then

Cigarette stained fingers
amber residue lingers
a record scratches
about way back when

I’m swaying
decaying
As night pools on
dawn

My lover grips my hips
Calloused fingertips
I lean in closer
“I just need some closure”

Tick tick
I hear your teeth click
time's going
and gone too soon

Ballerina tip
embittered lip
Degenerating mentality
rippling morality

Love tipping
fraying and ripping
asking quietly,
"did you Ever love me?"

Like me in the morning
Holdin’ on to the phone
while the message’s recording  
Just so I don’t feel so alone

It’s you silent and fuming
about a fight I lost last week
Late night questioning, assuming
nothing I want to say I can speak

I want more of you
but I tell you I need to be apart.
I hold you to another view
but never let you see the art.

So I’m drunk on a Sunday night
in a shroud of darkness, color hidden
Trying not to start another fight
Sometimes I wish we didn’t

But I wake up in bed
to that freckle on your lip
and rise like a doughy bread
only to fall back into love’s trip