first rush

There’s this blue-grey twilight in the middle of the day, with the blinds closed and shards of light cutting across white walls. My thoughts are curling smoke, lazy dips and turns in a sluggish upward fashion, and it strikes me how easy it is to feel euphoric with the right combination of chemicals and connections. I’m an addict to these tiny triggers, a network of electricity across my skin that follows fingernail traces and shows me the shaking intensity of touch. There’s this beautiful exhaustion in my chest, and it’s everything I have to keep the rhythm of the rise and fall; it’s always jumping to another tempo, an entirely different song as my body winds in and out of you. My fingers are bending and straightening, tapping and turning and scratching and nervously cracking against kneecaps, sending Morse code messages of flight to my feet, but those sluggish thoughts keep curling in their drugged stupor, refusing to transmit urgency of any kind. I’m vaguely aware of this internal power struggle but couldn’t be less interested in anything that takes me away from tracing your chin with my shaking index finger. I am chasing these drug-induced delusions of grandeur like that first, great rush; I am recklessly discarding the present in pursuit of the future; I am watching decades appear as your eyes lovingly convince me they are real. The future is shaded in this blue-grey twilight.

drugged divinity

There's a glow in the corner when I wake in the night and this is the closest I've come to seeing spirits, believing in something as beautiful as your ghost. Your shadow rolls across my bed, leaving shining strands of heroin to prick me in my sleep, and I settle into numbed, euphoric possession. The room lightens in shades of grey and turns to muted blue as I slur a prayer to this drugged divinity, raising words from the dead like a junkie savior.

curls

I climbed back into bed, still warm from your body, and inhaled the ghost you left lying on the pillow, the traces of drunkenness, the kiss-till-our-lips-went-numb, the strands tied around fingertips, the parts of you lingering on lips. My lungs swelled with anxiety as my throat reached for water, oblivious to the tattered thoughts and nearly spoken words resting heavily behind my tongue. I sank into your memory, stitched onto eyelids, shaded the room with rosy ignorance and pulled the curls of your smoke into my chest.

fog

I've been up at night 

In the darkest room I could find 

Knocking on wood

Holding my breath

I've been whispering 

To the cracks on my ceiling

Biting back fear

Waiting for you

And I painted pictures

With the blood on my lips

Dry from sleeplessness

And I found shadows 

Moving on the wall

Asking me to break

I've been awake

Tracing lines down your face

With the fog on the window

And the blood in my veins. 

calm

For all intents –

I’m purposeless, wandering. Let’s remove aimless pretense to describe this lazy limbo year, fucked and hopeless. The teenage cancer I knew a decade ago has grown six feet and sits low on your spine, reaching for the grey matter gold, waiting to choke the saviors in your brain with fingers in your mouth. Tilt back your head so I can feel something, navigate to the stem that pulls your strings. The ground is a calm I can’t touch, so I dig my nails into your skin and pull myself up a few inches until my head clears the fog. I’ll balance on fleshy footholds until decay drops me from my pedestal

stairs

I walked down a damp sidewalk and I saw a spiderweb, stretched out to full and catching each drop that fell within its grasp. I heard violin; I smelled you on my shirt; I watched another drop fall to be placed carefully among thousands, a shining connect-the-dots that took on a meaning entirely its own. I traced my tongue along the outline of my lips, taking mental pictures along the way of the places you had left your mark. I left my mind in the crack running down the stairs outside your front door, and I brought the rest of me, useless and hungry, back home.