In July
right after her name stopped showing up on your phone,
we climbed a mountain.
It was one of the hottest days that summer, and I think
we both thought it was a test.
Too much weight teetering on whether we could make it
to a plateau on that cragged mountainhill
and then retrace our steps on a weary car ride home
without airvent fans on full blast,
sending shivers down our spines to fill the silence.

Boots that didn’t quite fit, a cramp in my abdomen stopping me halfway for a moment,
we smelled like stale bugspray.
And I still felt the ***** of a mosquito pierce the forgotten spot
on the back of my neck.
Flushed from the waist up,
sweat pooling on the cleft of my lip,
a damp heart-shape on the small of my back;
your hand pressed a small pressure against the dip.

Never ones to let our successes cheer quietly,
we spread ourselves bare on a flattish rock.
Pretending to be naïve still, we soothed sweat-salted wounds with kisses,
while creating new ones until our kneesbackselbows wore matching rock-burn.
Something in the pinky-warm of my face made you love me again that day.
I know you never stopped,
but I also know you forgot what my laugh sounded like.

Summer 2013, we made the most of our rickety hearts.

conduits of experience with the conduits of our perspectives. the tube with its inside ribs, ribs of view.

for some, what beats within just beats, the most feral piece of us all caged up.

for some, love gets shoved in an airvent and a doll dressed up takes its place to meet the people.

queerness is a great harvest when the fruits are ripe enough to fall on heads.

for some, the brain is a wet field and we’re lucky its ecosystem trusts us.

there are sadly better alignments for our jolted existences. better than getting dressed up to discover it’s the wrong occasion. the mushrooms are laughing at us and it’s a pain that finds every fiber. the ribs tell us, “he just has his days.”

brittle resistance, put the doll to bed gently and walk away with the carbon monoxide sensors singing. we cannot keep suturing. the worms clearly want it. unscrew the vent and bring love out for a nice picnic. any who laugh are laughing alone, i trust the fungal approval. i plant my fingers and feel them humming.