Where do you go
when your gaze is fixed
on the junction of the crown molding
in the corner of your bedroom?
I watch your eyes, glazed with
labyrinthine pessimism
darting back and forth, navigating
a universe tucked away in a cupboard,
as you try to conquer the monsters in your
never-ending mental maze.
I used to think you were
admiring the stars,
but now I
turn to them
and beg them to let me follow you
and bring you safe back
home.

Everything we once thought unique
settles guilt-riddled into
misshapen paw prints on the dusty
floor.
It shakes with the sound
of the television set,
blowing blithe static,
glowing black and
blooming into the everlasting
forgotten space between hello and good
bye.
It leaves me dehydrated, coughing, spurting
riotous air from the ugly gaps in my
teeth, barely
audible over the roar of nothing. It's goaded
by accidental location permissions, loaded
with deafening illusions of privacy
which hold fast to the hands
of individuality.
They tighten around my neck
and press against my stomach
and demand to be
always remembered, never noticed
like oxygen and
extinction.
So we will do nothing but obey;
rebellion is a luxury we
are too proud to know.

to think you were perfect, but
you’re as close as it gets.

I won’t forget to
mention how I
hate your asymmetrical gait; it
offsets my lucent cynicism
and offers me seasoned lucidity
which I already told you I don’t want.
I’ll continue to make
my disjointed offhanded comments,
thank you,
much to the vexation
of my sharply shrinking social circles.
Advice has always been icing on
cake which I
scrape off with a knife and
use for shape-making on
the edge of my paper plate
as the other party goers
advise me not to play with my food, it’s
childish.
And rude.
And anyways, who doesn’t
like icing?

He walks barefoot on rose petals and
mint leaves
his silent footsteps leave no
footprints
I'm scraping gravel and
begging
to be the ground he walks on.
Patience flourishes between his
lips
and hurls me sprawling awestruck into
love
and tearful adoration
for all the beautiful cracks in his skin
that ****** sunlight and smatter
glittering rays in
prisms across the ceiling
and thread all the raging gaps in my heart.
Of course he is artwork,
blessed by reason and
the mercy of the human experience,
highlighted
by his generosity and the way
his kindness ushers the blood though
my veins.
If not for his beaming soul, I’m sure
my ship would sit shattered selfish
at the bottom of the
livid ocean. And
if, after all his noble graces,
I can offer him nothing else, I
will
at the very least
fix his mirrors.

I miss the way you
punctuate my sentences
put purpose in my windswept
words
complete me
make sense of my
heaps of jumbled gibberish
you
hold me when Im
running on
when youre
gone Im
stuck split in splices
and tacky fragments

I wrote a poem that perfectly
captures the essence of being
in love with you,
and I'll never put pen to paper again
for fear of dirtying
everything pure and holy
you bestowed on that page.