fingertips

I think I'll count the ribs beneath your skin,

Circle shadows round your hips, 

Press a promise to your chest,

 and hold my breath. 

coastal

It’s the soundtrack to a memory.
hours of asphalt to California
you riding shotgun; my car as a Catholic confessional
strands of hair shooting sparks through open windows
screaming delirium, sober insecurity
clashing in a blacked out coastal kiss

Shuffle

My feet shuffle past your doorstep, concrete sidewalk meeting brass boots in a shower of apathetic sparks. I'm just trying to put on a show, keep the fucking lights on through winter, but there's a whiskey buzz that always seems to dim the energy. 

You're warm inside your cocoon of chaos, and I can see your window blinds strain to hold it all inside, keep the fucking lights on despite your childish belief that there's someone hiding in every shadow. 

We live in cold, intoxicated unreality, never sleeping, holding out hope that the lamp in the corner will keep us safe. My feet shuffle past your doorstep, inching forward relentlessly.

sleeping

we kissed at the bathroom sink

your hair still wet from the shower

that we took together

slipping and laughing

and freezing together

together and separate,

all in that moment.

shock before injury

I drew a circle around my head, bouncing the broken piece of chalk over the rough irregularities in the asphalt. It grew smaller with every loop, harder to hold onto, fracturing in the divots and cracks, artifacts from mistakes long forgotten or never noticed. The chalk spat its last neon breath out on the street, but I kept my frantic rhythm, blending fingernails into blacktop like mixing watercolors, blurring my bright halo with numb, rusted red. 

sacred circle

You move through the world

a sacred circle cutting lines across your chest, 

every molecule gripping sunset skin

with my fingertips

combing every strand,

carving circles in my skin.

sacrifice & piety

There's only so much you can sacrifice

before you're skinned like a calf

There's only so long you can fast

before you're shorn and shaking

There's only moments

and then they're past

There's only love-drunk punches

that violently clash

And what good is one thought

when it's bound together with a thousand desires

And what good is one of us

when there's a thousand others burning between

If there's an altar, there's a knee

and there's a cap pressed to the ground in piety

If there's a hunger, there's a need
that's neither here nor anywhere you could be.

sonata

I pushed my nose into your skin,

tracing the inky scar tissue while your chest rose to meet my lips,

falling away with each murmured exhale.

My fingers conducted a piano sonata across your ribs,

down your spine,

circling a hazy melody on your hips.

I listened to the wind tear the leaves from their branches.

re:

I’m folding our last good memory in an envelope,
and there’s this imperceptible shift from longing to anger,
clotting and breaking like cuts on my knuckles.

I hate the way I disappear inside the fantasy of our lips,
our tangled hearts,
our promises and memories.

I’m taking a deep breath for what seems like the first time,
remembering how the rest of the world went dark
as we stood on a corner and kissed to our future,
a perfect fucking mess.

Do you still want this?

Little world

I want your madness

I want to crawl inside our little world and drink myself to happiness

beneath our feet

I remember standing at the window, looking at the city, wrapping my arms around you and breathing your skin into my chest. We stayed drunk and braced for a winter that never came, bleeding into a spring that tasted like whiskey and a summer that smelled like a burning bridge beneath our feet. I was only prepared for chaos, stepping outside of my skull in a blind attempt to drink myself to happiness with you by my side, sweet shots of love, staving off loneliness in a mad dash for sanity. I want to pull strands of your hair from my pillow and watch you from across the room, but your ghost casts its paralyzing shadow over every movement.

slow removal

Inhale, all our swallowed anniversaries turn to sawdust in my throat.

I think of your fingers molding memories into plastic bags, pushing them down my throat with the calm determination of holding an infant under water.

When I breathe, my chest rattles with your body.

This is a slow removal, dismantling us piece by piece.

On those rare days I feel brave enough to desecrate our mausoleum, I inject myself with pure indifference before severing the limbs of our future.

I blindfold myself before burying them.

I found your necklace at your throat, held tight between stiff fingers.

I kept its bronze circle at arms length, cautiously reveling in the last piece of our beauty.

We drove together, a disappointed ghost trailing our exhaust, your halo scratching my arm with every turn.

I drew circles in the air with my finger, making promises to no one but myself.

Divination escapes me, I need to know the answers to all my masochistic questions.

You hang like a chandelier over my head, held by two fraying black threads,

Torn from my wrist in a desperate attempt to keep from shattering again.

Pretend

I'm planning for months

But each month's just a day

And a day's just a moment

What the fuck does that say?

Breadcrumbs

There's a maze in your mind, constructed to lead us to our graves. 

I left plenty of breadcrumbs along the way, planted a garden's worth of seeds in the hope that we might see pretty flowers bloom in spring, but even the strongest life needs sunlight, and we both know this path was built on sunsets. 

There were plenty of clouds drawn by airplanes, warning us of danger while we sat on the beach, oblivious to the heavy atmosphere dangling like Damocles' sword over our heads. The sun fractured through every droplet in those silken white trails, blinding us as we stared at the cresting waves. 

I wandered into the reproduction of realities I've only glimpsed for moments, surreal replications of irrationality and deception, the expectation of gravity combating the knowledge of love in a deadly game of fortune. 

There's a maze in your mind; I traced my steps backwards and found only dead-ends. 

permanent fixtures

Every sunset begs me to hold you,

kiss you like you're here

So I've started staring at the moon;

it never blinds me the way you do.

Every question begs an answer,

but I'm begging for silence,

stuffing my ears with strands of your hair:

Entangled and deafening,

crucial and beautiful,

permanent fixtures,

threading my lips

With stitches of love,

keeping me silent,

keeping us static,

with mountains of meaning

trapped under my tongue.

Here is the gift of my shortcomings;
tear me apart.

window

I'm measuring pain in sunsets, and I can feel the days getting shorter.
I'm awake with the deep blue dawn smothering my window, filtering the oxygen through thick cotton, barely conscious in the autumn light. There are always dreams, draining out of my ears to pool on my chest, saturating my skin with sluggish potential.