My legs swinging at the counter
your soul sizzling in the skillet
my cheek pressed to cold granite –
is time running still?
Funny how the night turns
my palms to melted wax
they're stuck on your skin; I
dissolve.
We drift intertwined,
smoke into the detector
and
I'm sinking through the floor,
if you care.
If you don't
I'm gone,
and I was never here,
I never shuddered from your warmth
or cried into your pillow.
You could look for me but you
don't, do you?
You sit redly in the cold,
waiting for Love to love you.
I would be remiss if not to inform you
she is not I
we are not even acquaintances,
her heart and mine.
I am where you aren't searching
she is seated next to you,
waiting for you to give her
what you never gave me.

You're dangling again, darling;
existentialism isn't your color
flush bright and laugh skywards
finish your homework and fall in love.
You rise with blithe baroquism,
I can see it in the faint
shadows beneath your eyes
as you rush windward into past.

It's alright to love the program, honey,
but if you're over-cautious
you might turn too perfect.
Just don't while I'm alive, please,
for I love the curls in your words
and the feathers in your walk.

Be me when you don't want to,
and be you when you forget what it's like.
Just remember me around the edges,
paint me in the corner below your signature
and remember my kisses goodnight.

Eloise, I showed you my soul
you blinked and your mouth did not move
I wanted you to smile, Eloise,
I wanted you to shed a tear
despite your efforts to keep it in
I wanted you trembling in my arms
I wanted your salty cheek against mine
What did I lack, Eloise?
You hung the moon and
left me to burn on the sun.
You pinched my heart between your teeth
and kissed another's lips.
When lightning struck my empty veins,
your laugh was thunderously clear,
your smile like a lonely star,
burning as my universe dissipated into black.
Ruin me again, Eloise,
I’ll stand and melt in your acid rain,
your scathing apathy will puddle me
as it flows from your soul into mine.
Numb me, if you would, Eloise,
so I can be like you:
so my mouth does not move
and tears no more escape my eye.

"Would you like cream and sugar?"
the barista
my lips pressed together
"Yes."
You,
speaking for me
I hate cream and sugar

Dark magic
black lace and
red lips.
I'm enchanted -
what was your name?
It falls off
your tongue like
caramel or tar
I'll drink it either way.
Saccharine sapphire
pulling me underwater,
showing me how to breathe
kohl pencil
feathered around your eyes
a punch to my stomach
I feel it in my toes.
The passion of the sun
cloaked in the moon
dangerously beautiful,
and I'm a connoisseur of hazard.

I've been circling the drain
for a while now,
screaming at you because
you look just like me.
when I get out I'll
try new things,
like papaya and cigarettes.
I won't like them but you
won't stop me anymore
I'll converse with the dead roses
on the vanity, ask them
if they knew they'd die,
from the moment they met your fingertips.
They won't say anything, because they're dead
and they're plants.
Maybe I'll become an anarchist;
I'll abandon that old idealism
of true joy and technology,
of solidarity and sovereignty
I'll try out lobotomy
and I won't wonder anymore
how you'd answer
those questions that rotted
in the back of my mind.
But before I do, I might
walk for a month,
day and night, all the way to
your house, only to find it inhabited
by someone new
and I'll be reminded that it might be time
for me to go,
and never come back.

you rise taller than my dreams,
grander than my hopes,
just short of reality
i don't know you, but i want you