Footsteps crack the timber spines
as you turn your sacred head
begging lights that cease to glow
to absolve you of the dread

you plead the cosmos for salvation
but it was dealt a feeble hand
don't you know the sun is deaf
when it's dark, when I impend

your skin quivers like December
making waltz your August mane
June eyes moisten as you realize
you're my Christmas, my *******

mind's in flight but legs are nailed
to the dirt that gave me birth
shoulders blend in one anoher
at the sense of my unworth

as the dusk forgets to dawn
I claim my morning in your eve
tonguing omens to your core
'twixt the hills that weightless heave

feelers clad of rotting bone
crease your wrap of liquid stars
midnight tears and we are dropped
down the mouth that ever starves

bend the wings you'll never spring
on the winds that summers blew
you're below, my autumn leaf
I am all that's left of you

hunger breaks my crooked jaw
what was buried comes afloat
as the sea you've always been
calms the fires in my throat

tar will steal your holy veins
you will leave my arms forlorn
that's the price a fiend must pay
on the hunt for unicorns

until then I breathe your lungs
as my pupils pulse with felony
you're the dream I'll never have
my damnation, my Persephone.

So the weather eventually had to warm.
The first time I wear a t-shirt in his car he is
stealing side eye glances of my bare arms.
He says, I like your bracelets and with his
hands on the wheel nods to the one
slipping down his wrist, which I gave him.
And he must think he is so clever because
What we are really looking at now are the pale,
matching, horizontal lines going up and down our flesh.
           I shake my head, I change the subject.

Later we are holding lighters up
to dandelions and watching them burn.
We are lying in a field of clovers,
He moves closer.
           He points to the damage and asks,
           What happened here?
He asks me like I could tell him a date,
He asks me like it’s history
He asks me like I might say
It was the Summer of 2014
but I can’t name what battle took place.
          I shake my head, I change the subject.


So after you pull another girl into my bedroom, after you pushed
everything off of my bed and onto the floor
to make room for what you’d do with her,
I inspect the damage.
I pull the bracelet that I gave you from the wreckage.
I leave you in the window, I never see you again.
I leave paper cuts on my legs in vain,
I never see you again.
I have scars that take the shape of your dizzy,
lazy fingers tracing my limbs.
I will never see you again.