You told me that you had my back,
And I thought that was true,
Now my shadow's still behind me,
but where on earth are you?

It's perfect

He threw compliments at you
until they stung.

He kissed you
until there were violet bruises
blooming across your arms.

The fingers he traced
up and down your back
turned into thorns.

His words morphed into
bombs.

It's perfect.
Until it's not.

I learned to listen
By playing your
Words
On repeat

By lapping the taste
That your anger
Morphs into when
Under a sheet

Tonight, tonight,
This rumble won't
Take place in
The street

Rocket in your pocket,
Shark boy, little Jet,
Do you feel pretty?
Or have I not relieved
You yet?

Now something's coming,
Checkmate, game and set,
But maybe you'll indulge me
With one last cigarette?

Boy, Boy,
Crazy with regret,
Let's sing a song to conjure
The evening that we met

How suddenly my name
Became a sweet refrain
That you could not
Forget

It's only you,
Everything I'll ever be,
Don't matter if you're tired,
Come refresh yourself in
Me

I wish I could wake up
In a display case

No wood but my
Limbs
Nothing wet but my
Paint
Flawless
Smooth Razor-******

No searching
For caverns
To plunder
No caves to protect
From thieves
Gone asunder

I wish my canvas was blank
Androgynous beauty
A creation of
Choice

But I think I used to have a voice

Characters danced in my esophagus
And played my cords
Like a
Cello

They shouted on a
Page
And longed for the
Stage

But struggled against
My front
Teeth

After years of neglect,
Too cruel to forget
And too torturous again
To repeat

They forwent their "adieus"
But muttered "**** yous"
As they went to turn tricks
Down the street

"I love you"
Only fell from your lips
When you were intoxicated
So I slipped a bit of *****
In your drink every night
Pretending it was me
You were drunk on

I love him
I tell myself
I know that
We will be together forever
I don’t believe that
We could be separated
My thoughts tell me that
He’s the love of my life
Sometimes my heart lies and says
I could live an eternity
Without him
Like my friends say
“We’re perfect for each other”
And you can’t tell me
He’s not the one.

Now read from bottom to top.

the callous on my fourth finger has disappeared
when I attempt a semblance of a sentence my
hands fist fight with each other and i'm left feeling wiped out
like I should probably put the words back into my mouth
but the fluttering movement of my bones working with joint
leaves me feeling exasperated to see what comes of it
the knuckles turn a peach white and I can suddenly see
that my scrawl on the paper is running around in loopy circles
sometimes they embrace to create something entirely new  
they grab their bodies like they're nothing without the other
foreign nonsense in between spaces
but there's always space
you need that distance to make sure there's room for the empty
and I have come to establish a rhythmic
nodding of head
bobbling of body
lulling of mind when I interact with the dialogue
my hands jump off my table and lament that the writer has become too conceptual this time

there's mud on the front steps
the pools in other people's houses always seem much cleaner than yours to you
when you dip your toes into the chlorine water you think that only the extremely lucky can be devoid of dirt
the thought lurches away from you with each tide your body makes
and you forget what you're really arguing about in the first place
like a band-aid that unsticks when you're not looking
leaving an exposed scab and an embarrassing gravity when you think of whoever will find it next
when driving through houses that all look alike and the expanse is nothing but dry look-alike lawns in the middle of lush trees you can
imagine if you really try that at the end of one of those roads it will eventually lead you to the beginning of the ocean you admire so much
the gravel road kissing sand for miles until you can feel the salty breeze lick your eyes
and once again nothing can hurt you
and once again you're pure in your actions

the magnitude of that enormous church bell tower swinging forever
under feverish sunsets
the mass of an empty stadium with all the lights on flickering waiting for you to break in after midnight
listening to the deafening of crickets come to a sudden hush as you walk the grass with ***** shoes and grimy fingernails
walking to an empty parking lot with only a couple of stray cars and stray cats
like lonesome entities
stranded in the same desert of hot concrete like you
under the moon you can be anybody
feeling the blanketed weight of a starry night drunk off little bottles of alcohol
when you come to reasoning the logic of why you were in such places bewilders you