July

july
is a small word
but it contains orange-sateen skies and
the heated way your tongue traces my earlobe;
smoldering evenings are on the rise like inflation,
and i find that i cannot get enough of you
even as you fill me with
hot hot ember-breath-youareawildfireonmyskin and
Dear God,
let my bones be flint and marrow-matches.

[have i told you, we could burn to death
by the way you look at me?]

i crave your legs wrapped tight around me
like a scorching security blanket--
we could hotbox in our own love
and it would not be a stretch,
and i want you to hear that
no words sound ugly when you say them.

[the only words i want to say are
i love you, i love you, i love you]

i love you and it seeps from my pores
and fills my lungs from ground zero
and pounds through my head like drums,
my skin rises to yours as if called
and i whisper your name overandoverandover--

july is such a small word
to contain the two of us.

put this in a bottle and drink it.

i will not start by asking a question,
but tell you i always wondered why
we have eyelashes instead of soft robin wings,
and why our pupils are not star-shaped like our minds,
and most importantly,
why my skin pools to fit your body like rain.

[i have questions but you are my favorite answer.]

perhaps someday soon the world will end
with a river emptying its currents into our screaming
mouths
wide like an earthquake,
and perhaps someday soon we will be found
far from home but at home with each other
and all of the things you sing about
around our lovely heads.

we share words like we have joint custody
on the english language
and it keeps us together when flesh is not an option;
i keep tripping over long nerves and tendons
telling me your brain is one with your heart,
and you are everything--
friction and absence and electricity and oxygen, and

imissyoulikeyou'remyskin.

fight club.

are you ever just tired of hearing me say the word 'oceanside'?
do you ache for synapses and cerebellum, do you want my words
to leave you sinking? intensity in a teacup, do you want
to be left trembling? do you ask questions, love, are
you in love? because i want to be stripped down and
left with nothing, sing to me until i can't hear
anymore. i want your words to leave me without
nerve endings, fingerprints burnt off. let's
feel so much that we'll never feel again,
let's spontaneously combust so we won't
ever feel too hot. you and i and late
nights, oil spills on lakesides, we
will go out with a conflagrative
finish and if we peel away our
identity, we will never feel
that we don't belong. love,
we will belong everywhere.
don't you wonder what
people do when they
cannot seem to
remember how
to breathe?
lungs are
filthy
lies
.