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. 

Funny

I feel this rabid confusion settling into my brain, holding my breath for anxiety to pass like a kid in a car on a burning bridge. There's always someone there to make sure you're not cheating, sneaking little gasps of air through your nose while you choke on smoke and funnel hate through your irises. We're just along for the ride, right? It's all bullshit, it's all a lie, no matter whether you believe in truth. I've been drinking and dying trying to keep my tongue pushed back into my chest where it belongs. If only I could speak from the sternum, if only I could be as hard and brave and powerful as the bony armor over human hearts.
Funny how the tone in your voice changes. Funny how I shake when I taste the bile of words backing up in my esophagus. Funny how that infallible chest plate can snap with the right amount of force. If only I could recognize the pieces after fracture. Funny how things change.

Blacked-out

This is the only thing left after a week-long bender of swallowing heart and anxiety with a whiskey chaser. There's a shell here, but a shell is a place that used to be a home and I'm not convinced the name fits. The blurred truth I slurred through drunken teeth holds confessions of love and swearing sobriety, hanging like a blanket over my head, pulling my neck this way and that while heat builds with every exhale and loose strings fall in my eyes. This is the first step towards suffocation, the fabric calmly climbing up my neck until it pulls my lips apart with gentle cotton fingers and softly settles at the back of my throat. I'm holding my nose and telling myself it's not the end, I've swallowed sheets and pillows since childhood but I'm afraid there's no space left for oxygen. These are the last few minutes of frantic, and I will revel in the fireworks behind my eyelids. I will revel in blacked-out love.

Fever

I can leave you to yourself
You can keep the parts I left
Like the lingering scent
that you can't quite place
Like a memory that only fades

We all have trouble sleeping
None of us can make it through the night
We all have restless evenings
None of us can keep our eyes
Shut through the night

I can let you live alone
With the fever in your brain
I will cut dependency
Like a cancer from my veins
Like a memory that only fades

Like the image of my face
Through your irises at night
Blends together with the shadows
Oh, the lines around my eyes
Will sink into my skeleton
The lights along this drive
Will illuminate,
and find nothing.

Ocean

My eyes are covered in sand

I fashioned a mask, hardened with sun

that smells of a sickly sweet hangover coast

and shows me a silhouette, dark in the distance 

My eyes are covered in sand. 

My mouth is silenced with strands

You fashioned a needle, cooled with a kiss

threaded your hair in and out of my lips

and left me with meaning trapped under my tongue

My mouth is silenced with strands. 

So,

I captured a bottle of clear ocean water

and swallowed it deep in my chest

it stayed quiet and calm

when removed from its home

but the walls start to ache

from the crashing of waves

and the swelling of salt

and the moments of memory

and the hours of asphalt 

and drinking the sunset

puts salt in my blood. 

I feel the ocean, 

pushing out of my chest,

reaching for you.