why does your ghost weaken me when I don't even believe in it? why do I ache more after Klonopin and ice packs than before? how would any answer you avoided, articulating blank space and bleak dreams, unspoken, yet, aware of the ephemeral life span of the sun and every tear and bruise from genocides all the way to flirt-induced nudges, help our sinking ship fly? there's so much pain that our brains could flip on their backs, take a picture, and lose the ability to sort out the original prints from what may actually matter.

you saw everything, and then me, and then everything again. you're climbing trees that I wished you would have pushed me out of. you're shooting rifles that i wish most people would shoot me with, the rifles you jammed with a cork but now **** with enough force to cause ripples that hit the little broken bones inside of my chest.

for awhile, i think i forgot about bullets. whatever you feared brought me back to this bed and now the sunflowers in my eyes are metal, cold and lost. i'm still trying to chew them, but it is so ******* painful that my vertebrae can't stand each others' company.

i'm so far off of the third rail i think that some electricity might do my head some good.
i am a blind lamp post.
i am a diving board made of bricks.
i am gum, chewed.
i am waiting for an eighteen-wheeler in a train station,
wishing velocities could combine to hit me
as hard as you did.

sunrises and roosters have shown us beginnings since we were taught to walk and to be efficient,
but no one showed me how to gravitate away from darkness when soft skin swallows me whole and spits me out as truth in a poorly designed disguise
through molars,
through holes and
passion that I feel with every aching pain I'm told isn't actually real.

blood is real and bruises can't be healed with gauze and work ethic.
we're doors and we don't have hinges. we are not stones, even when ******, we are capable of productivity and love and forward progress.

the solution to over-depletion and unheard screaming was to erode together, but now i'm sprinting back and forth between pecuniary poles and pockets with energy that sunrises or roosters have never given me;

we've fallen short of grace-
is this a choice?
do the sounds under our skin that emulate doors,
pieces of dense wood,
being the victims of vigorous passive vindication,
cry out of
desire
or
necessity?

no one answers.
no one can-
no one.

to suggest such a static solution simplifies abundance and ignorance and when screen doors remain idle,
leaving holes for wasps, spiders, and
beating
hearts
to emulate chromatic symmetry between pasta,
soft noodles,
and softer irises;
of bed sheets and donated couches of past lovers-

to flood apartment doors and grated gates without mercy.

the paradox lies within the absence of sound when we knock on screen doors and no one can ever hear, not even
ourselves.

there are always victories in splitting threads and in being swallowed whole.

dark, warm,
blind,
reborn.

ONE plane ride, ONE bag of disguise, and ONE ocean more blue than the last,
do we deny our hues and fly, sit and swallow the sky, or
fall into dreams?

stay on the path of blue and fight for what is true because none of us have any ******* clue what lies on the other side of that pill.

sweaters WILL unravel.
there will always be another forest to explore,
imploring denial of bark, branches, bereavement;
leaves will only leave when they want to leave,
never because anyone else says so.

Shamans say that the eagle eating me in my dreams represents a readiness to plant seeds-
our forests will never touch the same ocean again,
but they will both grow in sweet sleet,
in sunshine,
in love,
in hate,
in promises broken and kept,
in love,
in love,

we're lead claiming to be paint.

i never had the right.
i never saw black as all of the colors at once,
or as the absence of any,
i just allowed retinas to dance and be still without ever taking any of it in.

monochrome rhymes with monotone but no apartment or pasture has ever been warm enough to call home,
at least for hollow bones and eyes constantly shifting from a gregarious green to a more genuine grey.

no one ever hears the crickets, even when the floodgates are open or we're searching for that perfect shade to transform the canvas.

you were a monkey with a paint brush,
a brief rush of lust disguised as beauty and anything else that retinas could convince themselves to be mindful of.

chipping paint on the garage will remain and any lungs in proximity will continue to breathe in the dead crickets.

i don't have the right and we'll never get it right.

everything is always out of focus, and the lens won't adjust.

i can't ever see lightning or romance. hell, i can't even see the top of the world when i'm comfortably on its shoulders and all i want to do is help bear some of the weight.

my bones have never known a shortage of blankets,
just anguish over idly watching the thermostat push the tea kettle to a breaking point where all it can do is scream.

glasses can't fix this.