Happiness across an ocean

I'm sitting on a windowsill, a downward slant thirty feet above pavement. The muscles in my legs pull me back toward the bedroom, self-preservation kicking in to keep me alive one more night, another day to cross my fingers and hope my head's on straight. There's so much beauty around me, there's so much I haven't seen, there's so much I've been a part of lately but I'm looking at the sky on the other side of the world and trying to convince myself I deserve to be here.
I'm sitting on a windowsill, with my feet hanging over the edge, and I feel the nerves traveling through my toes telling me to go back inside, drink more wine, go to sleep and think about it tomorrow, but it's always a sudden tomorrow and I'm still on the edge and I wonder when I won't be.

skin

The bumps along my arm aren’t due to the weather, 

they’re braille pages of panic and disrepair, 

bubbling to the surface. 

For every weightless smile of pride, 

there’s a ten-ton look of disappointment. 

For every good deed, 

there’s punishment. 

These bumps along my arm are scattered braille sentences, 

stolen from the book of blind heredity, 

and I’m ready to retreat. 

For every sun-scratched line, 

there’s burning anxiety, 

trapped in someone else’s pastime. 

My jaw aches from chemicals 

dissolved in the throes of stupidity, 

in the name of chasing escape 

and ignoring my blood rising to the surface. 

Pretend I can’t see the frustration in your eyes,

close my own and read the future on my forearm.

Summer

You can see the heat through the window, the way the blades of grass vibrate in the wind, signaling satellites and waiting for a savior. Waiting for the water to keep their youth, push away the inevitability of decay, feed the future. The tall ones huddle in tiny clusters, recognizing their importance over the stubs, but yielding to the choking presence of beautiful weeds. There is a hierarchy in everything, the only variable is the violence required to establish it.

transi(en)t

What if I threw myself onto these tracks
Would the track marks match your arms?
Would I feel the same sense
Of relief and content
Or would I end up chasing a ghost?

And what if god picked me up in his mouth
Would I be baptized, would I be saved?
Would it count the same
As holy water on a babe
Or am I chained to my shame?

What if I keep my eyes set a year in advance
Would my pupils go white in the moment?
Could I follow your movement
Like Braille for my spirit
Or am I only chasing a ghost?

satisfied smile

Sometimes I see your ghost smiling back at me, 

a satisfied smile with straight teeth and lingering lust, 

and it hits my gut like psychedelic poison, 

spinning hallucinations and weightlessness, 

and all the fucked up weight that drags behind our spirits like a ball and chain, 

a slowly creeping advance that I can’t outrun, 

with my molasses motivation and strung-out apathy, 

and there’s a widening sliver of teeth, 

there’s a pink blossom covered in snow, 

just to prove that progress is not permanent, 

and what is beautiful in one moment is damaged goods in the next, 

a spring smile saturated by snow, 

numbed to the point of amputation, 

frozen in a mental snapshot.

careless collision

I’m ankle-deep in cinderblocks that I’ve sugar-coated with love and confusion to smooth out the edges. Something gets lost in the transition between bitter abrasiveness and sweet acceptability, shards of consequences lying among remnants of fingernails, pieces torn from clutching tight to my special brand of broken. I’m drinking myself blurry to forget the throbbing pulses of pain while I sit on gasoline-stained pavement and trace tragic spirals around my feet. It’s a potent mixture of nostalgia, ripe with the stench of the moment, filling my nostrils with fumes of past happiness and childhood misconceptions and a hint of the future. If I wear these shoes long enough, maybe I’ll grow into a beautiful streetlight, instead of just another concrete obstruction waiting for a careless collision.

sun-baked

On a scale of one to ten, how do you feel? How’s your back holding up after a year of grey haze, bottomless mistakes, bleeding broken fingers digging deeper every day?

I’d like to respond, but I’ve scraped dirt and clay from rock bottom to smear across my lips and lay beneath a summer sun that never quite faded to winter. My cotton-ball brain half-expects the shock of an alarm clock to let me know when I’m done baking, wake me up so I can kill the sound like a caterpillar hitting snooze. Give me just a few more years in this old cocoon before I have wings and expectations of beauty forced upon me like a genetic crucifix. Give me the blissful ignorance of stability and warmth and forward-looking statements spun like a straitjacket around me. Give me the awkward shifting of familial threads when they realize they knew me vicariously all this time, filtered through a chrysalis, softened by safe love and fear of a challenge. I can feel the cracks forming on my sun-baked mask as I try to stay asleep.

Helix

The clouds of your breath decorate the windows in my mind, fractals etched on frozen panes smothered with foggy confusion. Your lifeline is painted on the glass and I recognize outlines of stories along its blurry path. This is my defense, averting my eyes from lines too sharp for fear of seeing too clearly. My finger lingers near your line and draws my own, a helix of intersections and missed chances cutting through the haze.

this moment

I am in love with this moment, and my head turns in the widest angle possible to absorb the beauty surrounding me in this small white room. The plastic ceiling and half-open blinds reflect love in blinding fashion; there is a muted-grey sun crawling toward our feet as you place your head on my chest and exhale. My head oscillates left and right, charting the front door’s poorly polished golden handle and following a line to the lamp standing at attention, the empty wine glasses next to the chair you claimed when we ate breakfast on that first morning, the lonely clock muttering the ticks of time to itself as it hangs above the limp sleeves of an empty jacket clinging to its resting place. My head turns and takes in the speaker humming under strings of year-round Christmas lights that outline the calm chaos above our bodies, huddled together in warmth on the couch. My eyes reach the edge of the room as the other side of that same muted sun strains to touch the mementos lined up on the side of the couch, a holy trinity of items at equal distance from each other, sacred symbols of the space between our bodies. I realize you are watching me from the chest you claimed, and your mouth remains pressed to my shirt while your eyes twist upward in loving silence until a smile lifts you to my lips. I am in love with this moment, as you place your head on my chest, and I inhale.

miles above

Somehow,
I found your lips in the dark. The blackness of this cave was so complete that the outline of your body was a hidden thought, but my cheek brushed warm sheets and suddenly connected a kiss that felt as though our lips had been together throughout the night. This is how I found you,

Suddenly,
and this is how you remain, every day as though I have watched my finger trace the lines of your face since my mind began recording. I am reminded of the exhilarating terror standing on the edge of a plane, miles above life, and I swear I've never felt solid ground before.