There was sunshine coming off of her
Blues and cream dripping from her lips down the crease of her smile
Pooling in the corners of those cheeks
Neon and tangible
The warmth irradiating from the swirls of her fingers
Southern hues
Her intonations dancing between the half moons between her index and middle fingers
Her skin shines
Mississippi mud runs clear over the rivers that dance beneath her collarbone
You can hear it flutter with the clouds
Her heartbeat
It stills the fields she runs through
There was sunshine coming off of her
Whispering strawberry sweetness
Tingeing the souls we carry on our feet.

you loved beer with an alcohol content more than your body could contain. he's lovely and you nudge him in the most delicate of ways because he's beautiful. you whisper the words you wanted to hear and he whispers back. you crawl up in your sheets and submerge yourself into your supernatural thoughts another brain deserves to hear. you walk in the most dangerous labyrinth of the island under the orange street lights thrusting up from the earth and still hear the humming birds eating biscuits dipped in yellow honey — it was gentle waves and light brown eyes tingeing its soft edges hands touching in the cold weather kind of safe. you end the night together with too much alcohol and red cheeks with a numb swollen feet but it's still what you wanted.

you went everywhere and you love it. he's a fictional varmint, too beautiful to be real, but he is. like how the shadows shifts from his small eyes down to your shoulder blades. everything about him and you were like carved on tablets and trees with names written on love letters. you love him because he's real, his rawness engulfs your soul and you know it, he's made for you and you were made for him because you've seen him without using your eyes, how your limbs would fill in the gaps and how the sound waves of your laughs will echo in the chambers of your organs.

you love wine and pour them every single morning and it tasted better than water but he's still the same and everything gets better and better like how your night lamp dimmed in reverse and in the worst of the worsts — a series of perpetual warfare and a great pertinacity of agony kind of worst — you still cling to the moment the Founder of the universe and all the elements of fate, time and space brought you to that day you met. in each accession of the most unfortunate circumstance, there is something that you wanted which makes you want to feel another mili second of tomorrow and another and another.

I held your heart in my hand,
Held it aloft beneath the moons glint,
Squeezing it sponge like
Until it oozed deep red rain,
Tingeing the clouds
Scarlet to crimson, ruby to blood.

The harder I squeezed
The more your heart emptied,
Trickling rivulets that
Traced the map of veins in my arm,
Soaking into my shirt,
White linen turning deceptively black
Beneath a dark sky.

I felt your heart pulsating,
Reacting against my grasp,
Forcing my clawed fingers to flat open palm,
My hold forcefully released.
I thought it would fall
And lie beating but beaten on the ground.
Instead, it rose unaided,
Elevated enough to obscure the cold moon,
Pulsating, vibrating, transforming,
Until it became the moon itself
And turned the sky black-red.

And now I hide within the bleak woods,
I feel your pinching hold,
Your tightening clench,
And I feel your gravitational pull,
Crashing me like a wave
Against the jagged rocks
Of what remains of us.

I need a reset button for my brain
Because all these emotions get crammed into the tiny space behind my eyes  
Crimson anger
Smoky grey sorrow
Shadowy fear
Rusty brown guilt  
Milky white joy

And they fold and twist and meld into each other
One ugly smear of color, like a bruise
Tingeing each thought that presses against it
With pain

I need a detox for my soul
Because these dark thoughts, dark words
Leave behind an sticky black residue
That dries and hardens over all the soft spots
Until there is nothing but a jagged piece of stone
Where the goodness used to be

I need a blanket for my heart
Because my body and mind
Have waged war against themselves

The smoke from the fires
Block out the sun  
Leaving me on this frozen, empty battlefield  
and
now
i
feel


nothing