You were speaking while I was writing poetry in my head
Back then, I saw you painted in deep red
When my fingertips boiled with fear
and pop from the air in my bones
You were random, embroidered lace
and I was only happy with the wind in my face

I told you there was nothing poetic about the need to be alone
You told me fear was present wherever love breeded
I told you love is an equation with no solution needed
You said love is distance and it meant listening to the echos and the sounds of space

You looked at the trees in the winter
with an admiration for endurance

In the evening, you were winter blue
but by morning, you were a soft amber hue
you were still blooming into someone new
and I just wanted to feel
something more than the air between my bones
and the words borrowed and loaned
that dropped from your jaw
I wanted the words planted in your stomach
I wanted the words that are raw
with the sensations and emotions
that set you into motion
Believe me, when I tell you, you are more than the color blue
you are the soft warmth in white light
you are the promise of the morning
when I only breath the night

The soft blue glow
seeping past curtains
arising from early morning snow
How it felt so forceful the night before
How it seems to be at peace behind my door

I don't remember what it felt like last year
I don't remember when I began to taste distance
when you were near

I read somewhere in blue ink
that I needed distance to collect thoughts
I tried to pour down the sink
I read somewhere in black pen
that you were glowing brighter than you had ever been

I walked along the frozen curb
buried in nights of snowfall
I could taste your voice in the night wind's call
I could hear you turn over in your bed
and I turned us over, gently, in my head

Freedom started with leaving
but I can never stop believing
in the woman, that waited
on me to never bloom
The woman I created
sending thoughts down a flume
and stuck floating through
a mysterious glow
a solid flow
I thought it was time I'd let you know
I would have never learned to grow
against gravity and the ground
And stop starting all my love with a countdown
There was no longer a cavity when you were around
Maybe it's time to be found

Precision lived in the way she spoke
Cadence like a poem
She could have wrote.

She wore heels in my kitchen
as she danced around the sink.
She had been soaking in music all day,
she needed the noise to think.

I could feel her desire and approval
of all my corners and sharp edges
and all my performances, she applauded
never seeking my reform
She just wanted to slip out of the face and clothes she had worn
All day.

But those heels stayed on
tapping the hardwood floor
I could hear her in my kitchen
smothered by the bright red walls.

But those heels stayed on
so she could make the music,
as she danced around like
there was a light flowing in.
I could feel aggression in the acoustics
that somewhere beneath all that soft skin
something learned to be muted
a streak of darkness,
that small spot she wouldn't let me in
She held it so dear and so tight
I couldn't get near

When we fell to ashes dreaming of ways to connect
I could feel the abstract effect
of her fingertips at the base of my neck
on the side of my cheek
in the curls of my hair
tangled and tugging
Little tears she left
on my back and arms colored in white
because I wanted to harness her light

I should have known she'd be gone before she left
so when I saw her there
a luminous, nonchalant stare
I knew she was simply unaware
of how my kitchen is still swollen with the music
of her clicking red heels
of how my floors have deep wounds that are beginning to peel

So, I burned through August like a pack of cigarettes
With a distaste for oval-faced, brunettes,
And I'm trapped inside the mind of a theorist
pretending your vacant pity
will make my sight clearest

Red morning commutes
awoke in September, with optimism to settle disputes,
Riding in the soft rain of yellow leaves,
but I'm not the only one who grieves
over dancing, straight-haired women
in red high heels

So when she appeared in my atmosphere
somewhere  behind dark curls, I began to feel
How afraid I was to draw you near

Her mistrust of my performances
and sharp edges
she soaked in the soft piano that drummed from the fireplace
and spilled in through the skylights in my room.
We laid in bed through Sunday's noon.
Silent kisses became the only music that played -
the rustle of sheets, quiet moans
the subtle changes in tone
in and out, constant static.
You didn't feel the need to fill the silence.
So I let the silence in.
We used to be such experts on reliance
Now we were never under each other's skin
This was not a game, either of us was going to win

I heard you come through my front door
you were all smiles in a small black dress
The lack of guilt behind,
the desire to watch your undress
was an innocent crime, but I couldn't confess.

When you wrapped your arms around me
I heard your shoes against the floor
then running down the carpets
as we drifted past my bedroom door

I never confessed
How loving you was driving towards an eastward storm
away from the blue skies growing behind me in the west.
How I tried to describe you as an art form
the kind that flows into me
but I'm an aseptic scholar
To have thought of you like poetry,
when you were a watercolor
painted in sparrow black.
How I loved you like an echo,
but you were a small whisper
that never came back.

The soft trickle of rain leaves
the little cough, as your hand weaves
Her head buried in my sheets
damaged by each day in the week
We laid in bed, wondering what wouldn't last
and waited for October to pass

Crooked teeth and definitions
I find you in secure conditions
Releasing all my inhibitions
Each encounter, like new auditions
Sleeping with the apprentice of my clinician
He was my latest edition
His voice like a musician's
and mine like a statistician's
I spoke in black and white compositions
with timed intermissions
and subtle transitions
that flowed through suppressed suspicions
stemming from little competitions
A heart like a mathematician's
and a mind, selfish, like a politician's
the Apprentice and the Clinician
fell in love with repetition.

Staring at miniature piles
crumbs, dirt
in corners of the kitchen
Looking around, the world moved in frames
I stood trying to shake free for hours
then I surrendered

I felt the song
the high-pitched squeal
of the world going silent

I could feel every sensation
ever scar
ever action
like an anthem
playing in my mind

I sank to the floor
Sat Up Tall
tried to breathe
capture my own fall

There was a runner, a fisherman and a photographer
and they all dreamt of seeing the Northern Lights
when they got there
the fisherman ran,
the runner stopped to take a photo
and the photographer sat and stared

There was a poet, a carpenter, and a lunatic
and they all dreamt of fame.
It was all about timing
and when the season came,
the carpenter built a guitar,
the lunatic wrote a memoir,
and the poet only wrote masterpieces after countless hours in a bar.

There was a student, an architect, and an engineer
and they all dreamt of freedom
from the chains of class, work, or the past
They were not unique in their envy
and were assigned to design a levy
that would hold water for the town
enough to quench rich thirst
and enough to drown

The architect sent the design first,
The engineer built a key like a curse
to unlock the levy upon request
the student observed, but imprisoned by impatience, could not rest
thought there was freedom in approval
so pridefully, he pulled
he stood on a hill ready for renewal
had studied the design of the levy and all of its features
had built a key, better than his teacher's
unlocked the levy and washed out the town
but absorbed in his plan, he forgot to warn the (one) man
and watched how even ideas drown

I unpacked your boxes too quickly.
I exposed the whiteness of your thighs
freckled by the reddish-brown hairs
I uncovered the wrinkles in your blue iris
the lies and tears behind your front teeth
evenly crooked

I wanted your words to flutter from your mind
but they dropped from your throat to the floor
I wanted your laughter in your core to be kind
but it came from a shallow, envious drawer

I pulled strands and veins out of boxes
Found bundles and tangles
that I assumed should be unraveled
but when I pulled and twisted one straight,
you left in your car with a crunch in the gravel
Drove straight into the arms of
Malbec wine
at low rise tables with one chair,
an excerpt from a novel bent at the spine
and the sweater you never let me wear

I drank from the pint glass you brought home for me
and it wasn't a statement.
I wore no mask.
I simply sipped.
It's only meaning to transport water to my lips
Calmly, coating my belly
So slowly I'd wait
Imagining water burning like *****
Barreling down my throat
like an interstate

I wanted it back
the feeling of feeling
the fear that walks with revealing
the love, the artist, and the lunatic
all cooked together and left to steep

I pulled out my own strands
the ones anchored deep.
I worked endlessly to straighten
You wrapped yourself in my veins
to tightly
You were trapped in the bundle
so you ran, then came a stumble
forgetting that I was anchored too
and so you pulled me right down with you.

And I left you there
with your tearful stare
I bunched up these strands
and laid out my demands
I carried them off, the tangled mess
You once announced was yours to hold
but you overestimated yourself
and watched me become cold
A block of ice, you could never melt
you were not all, you were not my wealth
you were only the weight I felt.