miscellaneous

dear you-

it is unfortunate that you are not an equation,
calm and cold and calculating,
all yellow and steel and answers.
i cannot imagine you because my throat is falling out,
unable to speak your name
now my dreams are all sand-and-butter lashes
and blue kites and
green hardware.
you are an End,
all wrapped up in a Man.


dear me-

your fingers will never callouse
and i tell you, the night breaths in more of you every time you close your eyes.
you are still cheating, still stealing,
still transperency at its finest.

you dress up like the ocean and pretend
there's something better,
waiting for you
even as the blood in your cheeks seeps out through lies.

how have you been sleeping?


dear x-

you are the final element, influence and beginnings,

you say you're such a wilting flower
but you tell us in turn that the wind is made of wrist bones,

clinking shyly together,
a chime of our own design
i wonder sometimes if you can hear my blood
slosh around in the empty spaces of my skull

the way i can.

equals.

Hours of nitrogen in our bones
we melt like summer-shine petals and words of cracked pavement
lies and flies and falling.

tunnel vision:

butterscotch and porcelain and heat--


meanwhile i inhale the sun, implosions notwithstanding.

sense of Belonging.

my memories of you smell like
twisted campfire
that does not belong to you
but i hope your hurricane eyes
drown you out
and we can be two of a
pair
of broken refugees
stealing room in ourselves
for another half-oxygen breath
of twilight.

if we asked you to forget the world,
you would say no every time
but every time i close my eyes
i forget a little more
of what you look like

[except your seabourne eyes--]

subtlety.

sometimes we don't notice
splinters the size of lamp posts
lodged in our soft calves
but we forgive this
every time.

some parts are oxygen--

i imagine you as dust
angry children kick up;

you are
on my lips
in my eyes
you cling to my hair
you are a layer upon my skin
you sit between my teeth
you are rough in my throat
vocal chords
lungs--

you are rapidly becoming
my
air.

a personal need.

i am sick of saying
'we are this, you are that, i am--'
instead i watch water and grass
sparkle in lighthouse teeth
my elbows are softer now
and i miss you.

my body is different
without yours for company.
it is messy and foreign and
unwanted
and i can hardly feel my own
tendons
anymore.

you have taken away
breakfast and ankles
and i am not okay.

there is no day for this.

happy is the resistance of cold air
between our chapped, tired lips.
it is the volume of our screaming
and our dreaming and redeeming
and sometimes on rainy mondays
it is the white sterility of medical
walls and the talk of drugs and
the underlying lies that jab at our
skin from beneath like
broken bones.

sad is at five in the morning
when i still haven't slept and i
honestly have nothing to do but
lie in bed and imagine how i might
be laying if you were there too.
today sad is the decrepit way
my fingers forget how to bend
to just the right shape in order
to conform to
yours.

opposites are a child's dream
they are glossy paint on green
unbroken lips and they are
swimming just beneath our
veins
white and red and
could-be's.