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bucky Jul 2014
i'm sorry about the way i fumble for words and breath, but i just can't catch my death i mean breath
and i'm sorry if this is weird but there are some people who mean more to me than i can express using any number of adjectives
and sometimes it scares me because my body was not made to hold this many hearts
there is impossible love in my fingertips and it will bless anyone who comes near me
i'm sorry for being a dreamer i'm sorry i got so close i'm sorry for holding galaxies in my hands but i want to be just like you when i grow up
and there are supernovas whispering behind your closed eyelids.
you cannot win acceptance from expectation i know this from experience
and maybe it's okay to be a little ****** up but i'm pretty sure my heart shouldn't ache in time with people who don't exist
i'm desaturated, not colorful enough i cannot handle pure cyan or magenta but give me olive,
give me chamoisee and i will breathe a little easier
paintings come in all shapes and sizes and rainbows i painted mine on my hands and fingers
i cannot help it if my acrylics mix with other people's watercolors
this is how i am
sometimes i go up to your front door and do not knock
i hope you will forgive me for this
i'm not in the habit of wasting breath but i will waste death until i have no more seconds and minutes and hours to do so
tell me you love me there is a heart shaped box in my chest
it is sandpaper against your palmprints but you will clutch it, fingers tight
curling in and around like it's a part of you
i'm not a geometry problem that you can solve i'm more complex than that there are wires
buried beneath my skin pumping iron through my body i'm more machine than flesh
but that doesn't mean i can't feel your hand in mine
i measure time in the beats of your heartbeat against mine
you watch me like a car crash, like i'm moving in slow motion but you still can't keep up
compartmentalize your love songs and love letters and love
your heart will stop beating if you just tell it that it can't feel anymore
i am a sea of compromises this was not the first one i have had to make and it will not be the last
but i promise you that when we're dust blowing through the desert
a thousand and one lifetimes away,
i will remember every second of you
and we will be constellations sewn into the galaxy
another fairy-tale to be read at night when our fears are loudest
and i will press my fingers to your neck to show you that your heart is still beating
i am a rainbow paint me onto your blank canvas like this is the last time we'll ever see each other
i'm not scared of how i am i'm just like everybody else
it's not my fault that i have love pulsing through my body like tidal waves
paintbrushes are rough against my rocky craters but i love them just the same
i will love you just the same.
when i saw you it took my death away
Leigh Everhart Mar 2020
My sweet little mollusk,
You polish the sea-tangy sand dollars smooth with the soles of your feet
You fill up your sweet siren lungs with a sun-sated breeze and submerge your bare fingers
Until they can sweep the slippery silt of the seabed abyss. I can’t sleep.
Your anemone fingers trace watery ripples through the ebbs of my dreams, trailing streams
Of fluorescent-blue algae sunk deep.  Your barnacle tongue shatters ships
Into ruinous splinters of treasure. I kiss
The cerulean ocean that hides in your lips.

My sweet little scallop,
The galloping waves break the curves of your shallows.
There are flecks of unpressed sea salt brine in your irises, tireless riptides of foaming-bright promises.
Your skin has the silvery sparkle of scales that effervesce endlessly, bending beneath the fierce tides of your palmprints.
I’m dropping. The current caresses your cheeks’ fishbone hollows, rethreading the necklaces strung out of seashells.
You bury your face in the swells of the tempest. I envy
Your azure, I worship your lapis.

My sweet little mussel,
Your tussled cyan-coral hair is unbleached, unleeched and resplendent
I am rendered transcendent by the green iridescence of your silk seaweed whispers. I have drowned in your splendid.
I can still hear your aquamarine through the white roaring waves cracking onto the shore.
I want more. Your crustaceous sand whirlpool has nestled below the soft curl of your chest. You press the world’s oceans in the dip of your palms
And drink deep from the waves swirling under.
I’ve drowned in the water-spilled seas that are cupped in your hands,
I have drowned in the pearls of your wonder.
glassea Apr 2015
poets are the people with the words in their veins
worlds in their minds beating against the curves of their skull
syllables in their palmprints

poets are the people who look at you and see
the galaxies underneath your skin
instead of the spiderweb cracks
on the surface

poets are the people who fall easy and live hard
(you've always been jealous of them
and you're not sure why)

(maybe it's got something to do with
the wisdom you know they know
and the seventeen ways
they know how to live)

i am not a poet
i'm just trying
to figure out
who might be
poets always seem to die young

— The End —