I remember the first time you leaned in to kiss me,

The way you held my waist gave me faith,
And I could recite the words on your lips with the same fluency a priest could recite prayers,

I remember how the taste of cigarette butts and addiction told me more about your sins than your words ever could,
And the skin of your fingers and how you held my hand as if it could've would've cured your depression,

Your touch against my skin felt like wedding vows in front of a priest,
Yet my hand trembled like a Saturday stripper at Sunday mass and not even god himself could stop it,

The way your body looked that night gave meaning to the word "miracle",
And how heavenly you looked under the moonlight could make a Christian want to be loyal to someone other than Jesus Christ,

My dear, I hear your voice behind the religious advice my parents gave me, "she's no good for you, she's no good for you",
And I remember how we drowned all the memorized bible verses in alcohol and sweat,

I still remember how I knew that you'd be leaving and how I wept into god's fists, "don't let me fall in love, don't let me fall in love",
And how we'd always find a way to sin, no matter the countless efforts made by nuns,

I remember how you smiled in between kisses, like 7 year old footsies at mass,
And I can hear the silence in the confessionary booth, and how I wanted to kiss you for a thousand light years,

I promised I wouldn't let it fall a p a r t, like god promised when he made the rainbow,
Yet the rainbow looks more familiar than you now a days,

So, dear, no matter how we fell apart nevertheless, I hold you sweetly in my ocean, like rosaries stuck in between pages,
And I never doubted you how I doubted whether god would help me through  nights like these,

And if god gave me this soul,
I will repay him by loving you with all of it,

And I will never forget how your lips danced while you told me you would kiss me till the end,
But those same lips would grow arms and shut the doors into heaven closed

The evening opens like a peach cut in half
Nature born on the river of blue lights
and progress drifts east with a compass in hand
A fixed thought is forgotten
by the lure of secret windows offering a better view
Only momentarily, yet too long
Already half the silence and when I come back
What is this image I see?
It is not what I left in the hands of chance to take care of
The evening is a rivers' divide
and anticipation is the frail glass we hold full to the brim
of pride
Be careful and do not trip, we have counted each drop along the lines of loss
and find we cannot afford to have confessionary hearts freely bleed
This evening awaits the night
Let beauty linger under the street lamp,
interrupted by the inopportune mouth of time
We feign indifference and rely on the amnesiac mornings
to erase and make long memories out of evening's almost forgotten
promise.
The night closes in like claws hidden under the shadow of a velvet glove
Drawing blood from the surrender of the eternally damning invite
Its divine sweetness, rising from the death of laughter
The evening becomes desire's divide
No longer is what we lost, what we hope to find
With paper and pen in hand we watch and despair over time's ability
to move to the next hour
There are only so many near misses we can allow chance to make
Before the evening's fragrance begins to sour
and anticipation starts to taste like regret
and isn't that what brought us to the river's path
in the first place
Before promises of truths and glimpses into colour
fooled the hearts
and now you and I
watch the evening open like a stubborn wound
And in whose hands, shall we leave history to slip by?
and while the moon fights the night
I think I shall depart to, from where I came
But in between distances, and the river's divide
The shadow of your evening's blue cannot escape my eyes.

the room is black
the sky is black
the night is black
the world is black
the future is black
the entirety of everything
is dark and dreary and
black

savior rests in a bottle,
a small red circular shape,
and it comes in hundreds
but numbers are not enough

I need a healer,
one that breaths
and thinks and
lives

I need to crucify my pride
and reach out to Roman
help

the black looms
and looks with
a smirk

how do I decide to
**** a part of me?

this decision, between
suicide and suicide,
rests one phone call
and terrible conversation
away

there is a bed
the bed is black
the bed is death
the bed is mine

the future is the kiss of judas
but the lips of his are my own

the solution does not rest
in a bottle or an exercise,
it exists in a man or women
who has no care for me
except that I am paying
him/her

my salvation is in swallowing
not any pill or medication,
but in nailing my arrogance
to a cross, swallowing it whole
as it may be, and walking past
their doors into a confessionary
between only me and they

I am caught in the moment
that will end part or all of
me

She wanted to leave but she loved him
He just wanted their life as it was now, to continue
She wanted to experience the world and had never expected
Anyone to tunnel into her heart
She didn’t like it

A feminist would say choose career over men
Choose life over servitude
Love is a prison

And she knew they were right.
Because if she stayed she would resent him
And eventually then leave without him
Unless the unthinkable happened
And he got her pregnant

That would be worse than anything
She would be societally bound to be “happy” then
Its illegal to not want a child once it graduates to a fetus

She had seen it happen before
The late night confessionary posts on social media
“I want everyone to know that being a mother
And a working mother
Is STRESSFUL. My hair is falling out.
But its uh… worth it?”
That was how those posts went.

So she left. And she was too afraid to look back
But hoped that he was following.