Finding loneliness in company, though
Just enough to humble me
Down to my bones:
My barest structure.
Hands tremble,
Heart ruptures,
Digging holes to hide inside,
But in the end I feel too deeply.
As for you,
You love too sweetly
For me to ever deserve.
As for me,
Not to discreetly
Do I devote my every word
To you.

She broke herself against the walls
Which smelt of dry earth
And cigarettes
Clenching her teeth on charred ends
And trying to make amends
With a bloodstream of saturated
Nicotine
Which pulled her into the depths

Exhaling ghosts from a blackened throat
But wishing to catch them in her arms again

Dedicate our lives
To try to remember how they felt
In time to write it down
Did we feel it begin to end
Or end to begin
A cycle of shedding our skin

A partial emancipation of respiration
Trying out new lungs
On stale air
Different shapes and shorter hair though
I was born in the penumbra
Of prohibition
To gaze in fascination
At your efflorescence

But for me it is enough
To see how beautiful you've become
Now that you've broken the chrysalis

The violin
I have yet to pick up
It weeps for you
Someday
When my fingers learn to play
A tune so bittersweet
It causes the winds to tremble
And brush across the quivering leaves
To bring your heart back to me
To mine
Where your name is embossed
In fine carved mahogany

That the melancholy cries
Of the bow across the strings
Stretched thin across the miles
Could reach your pensive ears
And last you
Through the years
Only two until we are both free

Maybe nostalgia is a weapon
Or maybe I am too ambitious

I have yet to discover the depths
Of what I would become for you

You await the day
The weight of oppression will rise
From your shoulders
As the wax runs down the
Candlestick holder and
Pools in the grooves of your table
Only to grow cold

You taught me how to walk as
We grew old
Receiving many a distant embrace
With arms empty
And I still wish to fill the space
Words are inefficient
It seems at times
Nothing is sufficient enough
To make you feel
How loved you really are

I have not lost you yet
So there is no need for you to feel lost

Are these the arms that
So carefully enveloped
My small, sinking shoulders?
My legs must be soldiers
To keep moving
Though my bones are lead
And the pain in my head
Echoes through every cell
That composes this broken body—
This body that is dead.
This body that is not mine.

I am a stranger.

     (Madeline
     Am I in love?

     It's not like they said it would be)

They say it is
What we are made to find,
The reason for human existence.
Is not everything we do
Driven by the mad desire
To feel cared for?

We're chasing a delusion:
Something people tell themselves
To help them fall asleep at night.
We live on children's bedtime stories,
Though we were never children.
Maybe one day we will be

After learning to cry more softly
As not to be made vulnerable
To those who do not wish to hear it,

After learning to stifle those tears
After the nightmares
And the panic attacks,

     (Madeline
     Find me—

    I have lost myself again
     But you seem to know me)

When my world comes crashing down
And my shattered limbs frame
My unevenly bruised skin.

     (Madeline
     Will you hold me again?
     I feel much stronger
     When you are here with me)

     (I've never
     Wanted to forget anything more
     Than I've wanted to forget myself)

I never knew that the drug
I would become addicted to
Would not be painkiller,
Nor antidepressants.

     (I never knew
     It would have soft
     Pale skin and clear
     Bright eyes and a
     Warmth that permeates even my
     Fossilized heart)

Little flowers in the meadow
Exchanging brief blushing kisses
And if you blink,
Even once, you will miss it.
The wind blows their chaste faces
In just the right way
As petals overlap
And intertwine,
Like grasping fingers
Destined for one another,

Or
At least they are
According to fate's cunning design.

It's spontaneous,
Instantaneous
Convergence of the stars,
And their hearts
Spiral down to the planet's face
In a plummeting
Fiery haze—

And they destroy.

In smoking craters they sleep
As one body,
One broken mass of
Tangled limbs,
As if it was their cradle.

At least they have each other.
They have themselves and
That is all.
To heal oneself
In another's arms,
And to throw oneself
Off the cliff face,

It is the same.
It is all the same.
And the jagged rocks below,
Of course,
The rocks below will be blamed
For the scarlet water,
The scarlet sands,
Slipping through the gaps between
Their white knuckles
And clasped hands
Still stained scarlet,

And the harlot
On the street corner,
In her little black dress,
The men who know her
Know her not
And do not care:

They only see the curls in her hair,
And the sway of her hips,
And the gentle movements
Of her deep red lips,
But they don't hear a word she says,
And do not care.