Metaphors we live by

I can hear a distinct melody, catching the rise and fall of a distant cadence, the sinewy modulation of your voice. I've never really heard the meaning that trails behind your words, discarding their symbolic baggage in favor of simpler interpretations. This time is no different; my stomach clutches as I imagine the movements of your mouth shaping those words, ignoring the larger structures that house them, give them meaning beyond themselves. I can sense sadness as a chill passing through the room, lingering its hand on my shoulder; but the tingling numbness returns and I settle into its warmth. 

Elevator doors

We find each other, wild-eyed.
My jaw works out an off-time rhythm to our conversation, grinding teeth between lines.
You are beautiful. I find glitter on my shoulder and smile. 

I hold you like I love you, and I wonder.
You push against me, starry-eyed.
I take your hand to my mouth, but my nose hits your fingertip before my lips touch your skin.

We kiss as the elevator dances and shudders to my floor.
You are transient and comfortable in strange places with strange people.
I give you something else to think about; you give me someone else to talk to. 

We dismantle stability and sink into this feeling.
Somehow, I know we're trapped in this place. 
I watch you disappear behind elevator doors.

forgotten

You mumbled something underneath your breath

While you were sleeping next to me

Something beautiful and fleeting

Something gone in just a blink

And by the time your eyes were open

You'd forgotten everything

We watched daylight come in through the door

And climb above our heads

I could hear the sound of lips

Moving underneath your breath

They asked me if I loved you 

In the language of your chest

And the pulse beneath my skin 

Echoed in the silence

Something beautiful and fleeting

Something gone in just a day

Something more than just a memory forgotten

Soft

Don't you like it when I sing soft
When the moment just hangs
Like a bird in the summer
Flying over asphalt
Buffeted by warm air and a lazy breeze

Don't you love it when it's pretty
When it makes you forget
Like a blow to the head
One you couldn't see coming
The sudden constellations of stars in your eyes

Don't you hate it when I love you
When I make you feel broken
Like the sutures you made
All dissolved into pigment
The brand new color of skin on your cheek

Don't you like it when I sing
When I look at you longingly
When I make you forget
All the progress you've made

A postcard

Seven years ago,
You saw the first green glimmer of an exit sign.

And you sprinted,
Tumbling down the stairs just outside the door,
Escaping the smoke, sure, escaping the fire,
Exchanging chronic coughing fits for a kaleidoscope of concussions,
Bursting before your eyes like stars.

And there was no instinct to catch yourself,
Grab the railing,
Brace your arms against the steel,
You saw only the vision of an exit sign,
And all that it promised.

And you were happy to have forearms,
Painted like watercolors,
Happy for the swelling in your brain,
Happy for the memories to loosen,
Nailed down for so many years,
You were happy for the change.

Clotting

There is a lazy kind of awareness as the syringe pierces my skin like a pebble thrown into water.

Ripples of discomfort and euphoria flow through my fingers, and you rest your head on my shoulder, watch the vessels contract, life-giving conduits shying away from the sudden intrusion with equal parts curiosity and fear. I feel the pressure of your lips as you smile into the fabric of my shirt, a mess of mumbled words ratting your hair with infatuation and desire, bearing witness to our steady chemical metronome.

Cellular soldiers rush to close the breach, but our enemy has long since vanished, slipping through the crowded capillary streets. My ventricles are flung open, floating like kites, suspended, catching the breeze from your carelessly thrown kiss and trapping its essence like powder in my nostrils, stale and chemical, rife with dangerous potential.

The vessel swells, and the clot begins to form.

bedsheets

Random rambling from crossword clues,
non-sequitur trivia,
jaded exasperation.

We grow tired of each other as I drink myself to rage,
find solace in sweet sadness,
turn down the corners of your mouth like motel bedsheets.

The rhythm of your disappointment is a metronome,
a series of drops,
blurring the ink on my skin.

Midnight eyes

Shameful,

seeping slowly through pockmarked regret

routine maintenance of routine self destruction 

sipping as we overflow 

I feel you exhale in my arms

And I clutch the pattern of your breath

Rhythmic and stale

Weaving safety nets of mumbled adoration 

Can you catch me from this height?

Keep me static?

Press your weight against my shoulder

As we sink together

Shameful,

soaking in our pride and reckless beauty 

steeped in stumbling sidewalks and midnight eyes

pulse

Watching you dance

Across the room

To a song that's playing

Only in your head

Singing lyrics with your lips

But your body writes in paragraphs

Piece together pages

Of the world beneath your skin

And when you move

The world, it moves around you

Moving with the pulse

Of the blood beneath your skin

And you carve out silent canvases

Painted thick with motion

As you piece together pages
With the color in your veins

stale air

there are soundtracked conversations between us where I see future in your eyes and taste love on your breath like a fog. these words are fossilized, purified, prescribed for my own abuse. I fill a needle with nostalgia and follow the usual process:

deep breath in, exhale

fresh oxygen mixes with the stale air in my veins, takes the pain down just enough to stay conscious. I hold my breath to feel every moment that will never return, reveling in the backdrop of fireworks exploding across my eyelids.

deep breath in