I’d like you to know that
you age a little less,
your smile always the precise
upright, and it shows because
it’s a whirlwind I can’t hold.

Did you know there’s a
hurricane caught in my chest;
where it leaves our land
untouched, and I wonder if
you would hold in this wreck?

There were times when
the leaves would rattle in-
between a thunder of
applause; slap your vanity
against your palm and
they said it ever was pride.

Please, stop when all you’ve
left is muddy earth, where
not even the sunshine breaks
ground on my each fiber.

There are many who
would admit that wrist
ran cold as we held
ourselves where it
wasn’t meant to stay.

Nod your head as I tilt
my chin, still we stroll
against the grain, and
you say maybe
they were truth be told;

we don’t reach home
when the
story reaches end.

Tell me that is a gesture to be seen seemingly unlawful. It is, you know this; when you hush as I lick that gaze in hopes to reveal less of humanity when draped in tears. Your tears; your blood stained now on a crisp white V-neck, the kind that sent your arms flailing, and snow angels were rung around until the seams only had space to breathe.

“Keep still, I believe this is where I discover your waist. This is where you hold me because what more do we both want, this moment?”

So, I did, and there we were as a grappling worked undone.

My fingers slip a cusp where my whisper trickles fluidly concerned curiosity of these smiles you deserve to run, as silk, along your skin. ‘Cause often are reasons for those glimmering sparks unto a lightened day; or, for a sheltered heart in need of warmth.

You can expel me below 
the gravel; it is a burial
this evening, let me take
you by hand and feel 
your knives shift upright.

My spine reincarnates a 
mass of bee-stings where
the poison bled you out.

You are a contortionist of
scathes my skin will surface,
and that smile keeps until
I could not let you go; leave.

Watch as I revel at your
gates of purgatory, you 
expect the lesser of me,
but I kept to that prayer.

I moisten life onto my lips,
whisper tongues with a
mourners’ scorn, but when
we persevere it had us killed.

This graveyard: your cold-
shoulders and, “Baby, 
don’t bring me back down,
not again,” is always yours
to call home; it is not mine.

You are a few slammed door-
shuts too secret for reason or
purpose, and where have you
set-down your breath?
When you kept the scrapes on
your heart hidden, you were
found anywhere but nearby. 
You know this: the two of us 
are, in the end, apart, and 
where your scatter of kisses
lay concrete; I found goodbye.

These bones are to be bent,
taste the broken filter in my blood,
but leave the fractures for tonight;
the downpour has me wrapped
too close against a desperate
thunderstorm; that first mistake.
You scribble warnings on my cast,
but it was left a forgotten smudge,
so kiss me here as I battle my word.
I have only rewritten the dead, again,
and the sky is a distance from rain,
so I hold you in all of my thirst;
grateful with this oncoming sunrise.

Sometimes you are more than
your sweetness, honey-suckle 
irises that bit as I fall through a
thought; more of a dream, and
less nighttime without a galaxy
so we find ourselves the home
where you lean uncharted til’
my arms have enough and more.

How you crawl in and
around my skin, until I am
known for the preparation 
again and time again;
“These paths are mine,”
so I kept the signals hidden.
For you, I would keep my word
because it is all you taught,
so little left-behind, but the
streets are on fire this evening.
The smudges are wiped clear,
and I hear your suffocation
so faint, so little.

How you crawl in and
around my skin times before
leaves me with a flat surfaced
perception of where I can’t
find you; 
when did the noise stop?
I’m kneading a prayer slouched
on the bedroom floor, and the
warnings have erupted in smoke.
I couldn’t find you, even during
your invite for a kiss where I accept.

It is strange, my hands are
no longer my hands, so I 
move against a current to
match your gestures.

Enough, my shadow has
scurried when you breathe
heavy enough to save a life.

Before I let you leave me 
with a blank stare, as I
lost the guesses to your
flail of arms and

dug your monsters deep
into your pocket, “Goodbye.”
Brushed the memories off
that skin which holds too many,

and it was strange;
there were hands not yours,
so we are found anywhere
apart as I follow my footsteps.