you are an ancient oak tree
an old soul, silently standing vigil
over my balcony.
your branches shade me
as i ponder the intricacies
of the cosmos, limbs outstretched
in a complex web of leaves
embracing unanswered mysteries.

moonbeams peel back the branches to peer
down at you, white light dancing like phantoms
on your skin, desperate to heal
the bits of you cut  
and marred by calloused hands.
one day i'll kiss your scars like the moon
and feel the heat of your bark
pressing warm against my form.

your presence steals the toxins
from the air i inhale, steeling me,
harvesting CO2
and producing oxygen.
i want to breathe deep,
fill my lungs with your fragrance,
a heady high, lost
in an aura of hot pink.

as a chorus of crickets
deign to sing just for us—
the only audience still up
at half past 1:00
in the morning—
i treasure the way your mahogany irises
continually brighten when you look at me.
a symbiosis simultaneously saving both of us.

Christmas lights dangle from the balconies
of skyscrapers off Highland and 50.
the wood of the dock is well-worn,
but firm beneath our feet.
our reflection is emblazoned
on the lake's dark surface over your shoulder,
a still-frame frozen momentarily
like a photographer's snap-shot.
stars wink hazily out beyond the city's smog, lazy
voyeurs surveying the crush of our forms.

those same nebulae must have conspired
to shape our bodies eons before,
back when the universe was first born.
what else could explain
the way you fit so perfectly,
furtively resting your head
in the nook between my neck and chest?

i place no faith in gods,
but distant suns, lightyears away,
deigned to reach
through parsecs of space-time
to smile down from above
as if they'd designed
this moment
just for us
and couldn't bear
to miss out.

the heady scent of Spirit Cigarettes clings
to your woolen sweater,
an incense of second-hand smoke,
shampoo, and Perfume.
i lose myself in an instant,
breathing in and out.
in and out.

i run my fingers through your hair,
lingering at your jawline,
circling infinitely beneath your earrings.
your hands cling insistently to my windbreaker.
wordlessly, we share an unspoken need
to simply be intwined
beneath a waxing moon,
staving off a chill
that has little to do
with this Florida winter.

wise enough to recognize
bliss like this interrupts our melancholy
only temporarily. ephemeral seconds
suspended like phone-lines between us.
but i yearn to share
moments like these,
however fleeting,
mutually wrapped in rapture.

i built god in your image.
an entity guised in black, clutching
half-a-pack of cigarettes, erudite
and attractive, smoldering
as dark matter, spinning incessantly
like a compass distracted by a magnet.

heaven was hanging from your lips,
momentarily adrift, caught like a meteor
en route between two planets,
tethered by tendrils of gravity.

agony
is continually waking
to your absence.
life wouldn't be hell
without hope.

there's a residue of wheat-paste
stuck to our fingers. each time we part
to adorn the concrete walls
with antifa posters, the molecules grasp
for one another, suctioned together, desperate
to hold each other
just a moment longer.

absently, i remember
the last time my fingers were glued
to your contours. you grasped my hand
then, as well. only tighter. held me firm
by the wrist as we eclipsed and i slipped inside
you, both body and mind. between clenched teeth,
a gasp of bliss traipsed
like a brushstroke across your tongue.
you ripened, sticky as a pomegranate
split wide open, slick and sweet and pink.

i will never again be your lover—at least,
not in this lifetime. but tonight
you were my partner in crime
and i like to think that maybe
that counts for something.

the fire of your defiance burnt your name
into my tongue. a caffeinated elixir
scalding as coffee, smooth as milked almond.

a rebel amidst the fray, hair pink as bubble-gum.

i am as scorched as the earth left
in the wake of predator drones, but i yearn
to hold you beneath a moon of blood

and cover this city in red and black paint-bombs.

your eyes are the espresso at the beginning
of a long day, a pick-me-up, a reminder
that human beings are the works of art

wrought by the hydrogen of a hundred billion suns.

buttressed by bisected nebulae
our galaxies coalesce.
soft-spoken Andromeda hurtling
towards a somber Milky Way.
a slow dance plays
to the crooning toons
of Brand New. am i experiencing Deja Entendu
or are the Devil and God
merely raging inside us?

Christmas lights, distant as parsecs,
twinkle every which way we look.
multicolor displays flash
in dizzying arrays, winking in and out,
drizzling like dripping icicles. sad songs
spill continuously from the stereo as we drive
through one neighborhood after the next,
aimless in our contentment.

it's half-past-2:00
in the morning and i'm singing Panic!
at the Disco with (and for) you. i write of sins
and hope this doesn't end in tragedy
as Trade Wind shifts and entreats us
to drift listless as asteroids
rocked to sleep in the arms
of an ambivalent cosmos.

we may all be made of star stuff,
but we both agree:
there's no god who could love this world.
so as we lift crude gestures
to an apathetic sky, we realize
the task falls to us. we must love,
for beauty persists
in spite of all the sorrow.

i am happy to spin perpetually,
elastic and ecstatic in your orbit.
for every now and then your beams of light
filter through my prism and provide
another connection along
our wavelength.

streams of salt and H2O leak
down reddened cheeks and condense
in a golden beard. a war-torn nation,
half-a-world-away, crystallizes clear as dayspring
in an insomniac's screaming and fragile psyche
at half-past-three in the morning.
what strength must a seven-year-old posses
to persevere amidst the perversity of cluster bombs?
munitions bought and paid for with the taxes
we fork over to the United States. will her blood one day
stain our hands with crimson? will her mother's?
a girl who just wanted to read, to escape
the tragedy that inundates our surroundings,
to a magical realm of pure imagination.
where we can summon spectral stags
to save us from the misery of humanity
and learn to disarm those who would harm  
us with the charm, Expelliarmus!
the bastion where i found the first seeds that grew
into a rebellion opens its doors to you, Bana.
there's a crater where your house used to be,
rubble strewn in Aleppo, Syria. but know that Hogwarts
will always be there to welcome you home.