your words form universes of northern lights,
diluted by stars and the constellations
of your cold lips against mine.
whole mountain ranges sigh and creak,
standing on their tiptoes,
reaching for the moon, for your rhymes,
for you,
to be dissolved into snowcapped hours,
where broken typewriter keys align
with earthquakes and forgotten mistakes.
you are a waterfall, an unexplored ocean,
the yellow of maps from other people's adventures.
you are every undressed superlative
that creaks my floorboards
and casts across my walls
as starlight.

cheap makeup covered
the purple marks of his "masculinity"
forced upon her in the hours of
coal, coldness and blame.

before it got too much,
I saw her stand on her tiptoes
and dissolve into the night sky,
into the night gutters,
into the night cries,
of pills, diets and mutters.

and right as the moon
swallowed her whole,
only to spit her out onto
guilt soaked mornings;
she survived.

she liked her liquor darker
than the backstreet beat poetry
she read in the cracks
of so few hearts.
she kissed storms and they hit
her back. she called it love.
she collected tears in bottles
and whispered that it was wine,
while the world ignored her,
breathed her in
and spat her out into ***** motels,
with broken mirrors
for broken hearts.

Hide underneath the stars with me
and peel back my skin layer by layer,
starting at the cold fingertips
missing the tenderness his touch caused,
twisting up damaged limbs and wounds of my woe,
past scars from childhood stories
- the ones not meant for campfires -
and around hairs that used to stand
when your breath danced like two ghosts
- you and I -
down my neck and into my bloodstream.

Peel me back until I am nothing,
but that little boy cowering on the bathroom floor,
with flickering lights, bruised elbows,
a lump in his throat and pain in his chest,
crying for something that no longer
existed.

A slight breeze of wind carries
Off your voice, the butterfly
Of your words drifting to a far away never,
Pinned down with a solitary needle,
Through the heart,
Love’s true dart.

Some said you were inhaled with ferocious delicacy, only to be
Exhaled into back street pubs and rented motel rooms with broken curtains for broken hearts - societies stinking breath in your eyes.

Others feared that you were the wave’s rhythm, each lap taking you to somewhere warmer,
you are the wind chill,
you are the sonnets lapping on the shore,
I hope you’re sure.

I am here
And you are further forever than I.