the touch of light on the pavement tells me that you are still here.
you are just a few feet away, bustling among the business of your mind.
you are apart from me by just paper thin walls.
whether that sets me at ease, or sends my heart in frantic sprints for the door -
i do not know.

You carry eternity with you everywhere you go
Like an over sized bag.
The eddies are swirling beneath a dozen zippers,
It sinks into your arms, its all you can do
To tip over, nervously, shakily,
Before it drops
And melts into the earth, you with it,
Limbs and all.

I hear in the simplest phrases -
How was your week?
I swear it drips from your lips
Like the blood was too thick to wipe away.
It's this raw, shuddering hunger
That leaves you trembling
Every time your forever dips its hips
On the wayward wind.

The rise and fall of the ocean
Is pushing the air towards my door,
It is scattering it's salty-breath over our skies.
I drink in it while stumbling over parking lots,
Smacking my lips over the enigmatic taste.
I reach for it behind secret alleyways
Never quite tall enough to ****** it anyways.

The rocks are swimming beneath my toes
And I ask myself if I am a body of water -
Is my flesh a rippling mass of liquid, too?
The pale moon will love me, if I am.
With its ivory gaze,
Dancing and turning in its silent ways,
And its tug-o-war under gravity's haze.

I can dance like the ocean,
I can breathe currents, I can exhale rain.
I can swallow the stars when the sun rises,
And I can free them like butterflies,
Diamonds in my eyes,
When night comes again to reclaim the sky.

Study me.
Be the restless scholar
Glasses turned upright, hair in knots,
Dizzy with sleepless nights beside the candlelight,
Coffee stains strewn like Christmas ornaments,
Where you study my pages
With relentless curiosity
Leaving your eager fingers shaky
Spellbound and hungry for the end.

Find me.
Trace your eyes over wayward maps,
Over my skin,
Seek me beneath the epilogues and endless chapters.
Read between the lines to see me
Waving and giggling, (or sobbing and quivering).
Write papers on my patterns, on my stanzas -
Tumble down the rabbit hole of my syllables,
Where ink is branded in the roar of rising-and-falling flesh.

there are blinking lights riding with the stars,
they are casting shadows on the moon.
my blinking lights are locked on the stars,
did you ever wonder if this was all for you?

And when the evening retires, curtains drawn
You hear nothing but the shattering din of failure
Echoing in your ears.
Behind your eyelids, you see nothing
But the teetering memories of horror
As they sink themselves into a framed existence within your mind.
And in your chest, your heart is contracting far too fast
In dancing spasms, it is heaving, leaning on the
Blanch white counters for support
Asking why the world is spinning and will we be okay?
Somewhere beneath the tireless groans of your flesh
You look at the moon hanging in the night once more
And though the blood is tumbling through your veins
At a speed that yearns for cleansing from the cringes of today's mistakes
You take a deep breath - breathe -
You let the warmth of repose reach your bones -
You are doing your best, you tell yourself,
*You will be okay.

You were never my thunder -
Loud and bellowing
Sprinting from horizon to horizon
But proof by existence only in the sound
Of your footsteps - angry goodbyes.
You were never rapping against Heaven's gate
Violently, vehemently,
Fist to the earth
Sending the stars rocking in their seats,
And babies shrieking in streets like dominos.
Never once were you the
Rage blasting in the ebony sky,
Exploding with dreams too great,
Memories too loud -
My thunder.
No, no.
Not you.

No, you were the silent slap of light
In twilight's hush.
You landed on all fours, claws etched in the soil
Spewing fire from your fingertips
Every time our skin met.
You sought me out,
The lonely scrap of metal left to rust,
You rattled my fibers
And taught me how to orchestrate warmth
Before I ever knew I could.
You never needed to knock down the doors belligerently
Letting the song birds and howling wolves
Hear about our privacy.
You never needed to - no - never once did I see
The cloud's confetti, and the moon's gaze never needed to be interrupted.
You ignited my currents suddenly, subtly
Ripping through the night for only a moment
Before letting your eyes sink into mine.
You are the mad scribble across the sky, deadly,
Wiping smirks here and there that smudge themselves in pastel shaded sheets.
You break the silence not with voices heard,
But with the electric language of flame -
My lightning.

I am something a spectator, heart spilling with whimsy.
The sky is a carnival, closing its doors all too soon
And I am the last guest standing.
Mouth agape in utterings of wistfulness,
I am dripping in the sort of sun-drunk awe that falls in love with
Spinning lights and
Phantom screams of laughter.

Why do I introduce her to my bed,
Two fold and larger than she's ever seen,
Swimming through the sheets to meet diamond eyes and bare shoulders -
Her hands are spring's cold river currents as they meet my skin,
They are icy splashes singing the heat from my flesh.

Why do I put down my drinks in strange wonder
To watch her intoxicated dance,
To watch her hips shudder and sway,
To see the darkness burgeoning beneath her eyes
As she lives in the shadows of her depression.

And why do I watch idly
As she scoops shallowly into the sandy waters of her soul -
The salt and the ocean just keeps filling back up
Every time she tries to live in the antithesis of
Him.

Four years, she told me
Then here she is again,
Six shots and two bourbons, *** and all,
Whiskey running through her veins
Like a race to forget how broken her heart truly is.

She is bent over the toilet hurling up the memories of him,
God, they are splashing wildly
They are reaching for her face
She can barely keep her eyes open,
Her face is bone white.

I ask myself about the night she falls asleep in my car
She is wrestling with her slumbering breath like repose isn't so easy,
Inhale, exhale,
The rise and fall of her chest spinning the night in motion
As it flings itself about painfully outside of my windshield.

Why do I stare at her, putting my coat over her,
She has closed eyes and her lips are ready to kiss.
Why do I let her toss me about, why do I let myself bleed.
Why do I let her etch her sorrows across my flesh, watching the ink as it dribbles down my spine,
Why have I become the paper to a broken melody?

I am between two hands
I am between day and night
I am pushing past the horizon
I am pushing past the sky
Past the darkness over morning
Past the seas and land alike
Past the stars floating, swimming
Oh, how my heart knows the strokes of
Those wheeling, spinning stars.

Something of a me is stuck on the secondhand, swinging
She is letting the stars sing to her
About memories scattered beneath the night sky.

one hour ago and

My hours with you are spent tiptoeing on a fence, white picket, strange and thin, and I don’t think I’ve ever known the footing needed to keep that kind of balance
With the lightning showering down beside me, arms length away and angry,
And the wind whistling around me with the sort of aloof fingers that do not linger playfully in my hair like they used to.

two hours now and

My hours with you leave me wandering home with scratch marks on every inch of  my skin but my body welcomes it, I think truthfully these limbs are a little giddy
And somewhere above the insincerity of it all the stars are peaking through asking me to believe in a sort of sadness that is now foreign to me
But God I don’t want to, God that felt so good.

The sky, once holding it's light inside like it was underwater
Finally exhaled.
The Heavens could breathe once more
And I saw the morning peak through the clouds.
It was still cold
But a little warmer after the sun's relieved sigh.
I threw my arms open,
The swing of my ribs was horizon-wide -
Something inside me was alive

and you begin to ask yourself why you fall in love with someone who wouldn't accept another part of you
until you realize you don't really want that part of you either

And I'll be there when they lay you in the ground
Six feet under - arms crossed - legs closed
Finally laying your back
In that straight position
That I always expected of you
Those tickles and chuckles the soundtrack of the cemetery
When the stars sang on your fetal-curled nights
When your lashes ran away like pollen on a breeze
When the life and the breath of a lover eddied around you
When time stopped
And our freckles and mind and lips all met
In a soul touching kiss
I transcended my flesh
And so did you

But you're in an ivory white bed
You're six feet under
You stopped breathing one day
You just stopped
And I hope your face is marred with wrinkles
And I hope your body is caressed with scars
And I hope your bad days really left a hickey,
a punch, a bruise
Because although I won't be there for it all
Please embark on a beautiful life when you open the door
I'll face the landslide
And I'll face it alone
And so will you
But just try and live a beautiful life
Okay?

A morning with you and your rumbling stars,
Dancing about the room with smiles running off my face.
There is someone tapping on my brain,
There is something telling me that this wrong,
Reminding me that tomorrow would think twice
Before giving you up to me.
Can't you see the diamonds in my eyes,
Can't you hear my heart blitzing on it's toes
As it makes a break for the Heavens above?
Can't you see that we would be the best of the best,
We'd be precious, like you would say, love -
My God! We'd be great.

There is a scratch in my voice when we part ways, though -
It is the part of me that knows that you
Will never hold my hand
Or long to kiss my morning lips,
Heavy with slumber.
You will never know a day-dreaming me
Screaming giddy as her character dies,
And you will never see me as I crawl across the sheets
To fit into the groove of your arms.
I swallow my next breath before the truth
Rips itself into existence -
I will never let you know.

Today, I am a pirate ship -
My heart, the red and white sails of a head-hardy
*** spilling
Caribbean bound me
With men marooned to a land of
Salty wood and salty seas
Knowing nothing but the sun's devilish smile in
The morning tide
Or an Atlantic storm
Tossing them about like
The horizon's spitballs.

We will brave the whims of now,
The rapid tonight, the slow coming tomorrow
With a voice in the wind saying,
"And I swear to the gold you will find
Or the breast of that distant thing called land
That my fibers will catch the air,
My fabric will not tear.
Unfurl me under cloudless skies
And the charcoal memories of an
Ocean-stripped-to-the-Heaven's-above alike -
I will take you to places you could never even fathom."

I remember when I was a blank canvas, when I was
Stuck in dusk - something gray and in between.
I think the world only knows innocence
Like shooters only know a shooting target
Because it wasn't long until colors were flung,
Spilling into the sky -
Red's passion, yellow's trepidation, blue's deep-seated sorrow,
And green is the dreamer that wants to know them all, isn't he?

I will never meet those days of gray,
I will never know charcoal hearts drinking in phantom
Images of rainbows from afar.
I will never again be a dull, cloudy sky
Lost floating on my idle waves
In awe of a distant idea of iridescence flaunting in the sky.
I will never again know the weightlessness
Of being untouched by this twisted
Artist of a world we live in.

The stars are marching out the window,
They are still uttering about
The mischief from the evening before.

Somewhere on the horizon,
Night is fermenting into morning,
And it is calling me for a drink.

I see myself in the poppy seeds and the playful trees -
In the dying grass,
In the crisp, singing breeze;
Under the breadth of sky,
Atop the breast of the sea;
In nature’s right hand -
Free.