Plucking tall glasses from their perch above the sink and
letting loose the dark that wiggled, relentless, inside it's bottle.
Gold was chipping from my mother's cheap wine glasses,
creating the sort of sad ambiance that you, unexpectedly,
find yourself craving.

There, in the belly of it - flavor resembling nothing of the puckering and
rambunctious cranberry and pomegranate that **** my insides with
summer-tainted sweetness - lurked a hazy glow, too often
over-romanticized, I think.

And I,
haphazardly stealing from the bottle's mouth,
didn't realize what was stolen
from my own.

watching your
lipslikepetals
caress the air and ****** my
breath, knowingly
or not.

Let's let the hem out of every
skirt we own so we can
be
  long
     belong in
their fraying ends.

You have a morning in you
the only reason for which I wake.

there's something to be said about
the time it takes for words to
formulate, make their way
all the way down to the tiptips of our tontongues,
I savor the ringing silence that comes
after the bitter ones leave, the after-taste of
arguments and the residue left from things I didn't mean.

if I could I'd pour nectar down my throat and
speak in whispers only in whispers and then
quiet quiet
quiet
down, I'd
whisper,
quiet down.

breathe in the smell of meat cooking in the morning and
hoping it's not for me because
my stomach is a delicate beast,
it only feasts on things worth feasting
while it searches for something to fill the cavernous black hole
left by one-too-many blows and one-too-many hearts sinking
and one other heart constantly beating above it, my poor
mother must know, she must.
know that

I don't sleep through meals for nothing and the smell
on my breath isn't alcohol or cigarettes it's my own insides
pouring themselves out because I can't muster up
anything
but *****
anymore and

I don't
want
to