my gentle fingers create divots within her supple skin
squeezing her,
mocking the ache in my chest
upon the first taste.

refreshed on the brightest days
splashed by the warmth of sunrays.
it’s been many long months,
in the minutes between.

and suddenly i am back on earth,
brought back to life,
her on her back,
my mouth on her thighs.

The time must pass,
The past must change.

The future comes
And slips away.

These men who think
Our lives are games.

Their toys to break
Their things to play.

They preach of  “crimes”
they hate and scorn .

They want us gone
Each night and day.

No crime to name
Except our own.

Monuments of wars we’ve won,
Reduced to bits, as if undone.

And yet we march
And yet we scream,

“We will fight
We will not break.

Under your boot
We will not stay.

Not before
And not today.”

The lovers,
They melt.
Flowing and naked.
Their colors,
They blend

As I slowly awaken.
I was so young the first time that I saw them
Taken aback by the honesty of desire
So blatantly plastered on my grandmother’s wall.

Sometimes I think she put them in the bathroom
Just so I could stare behind doors.
Admire the truth
Instead of shying from it.

And with them, I grew—
To know, to love
To own and to hang

In my own ****** apartment,
They watch as I cry,
As I nap,
As I break my cheap couch.

They’ll watch as I move—
Up, up,
And out.

I am not a novelist, I am a poet.
Stories run through me, from me,
Not sunny.
I stutter and I stumble
My dialogue is bad
And with prose, I teem.

Time buries me with
A million lines,
Too many commas,
Too many rhymes.

“So write a collection!” exclaim the encouragers,
But the worn backspace of my keyboard groans,
“Oh, don’t you encourage her!”

And so I am a poet, a novelist I am not.
Wishing for more words, until Time lets me rot.

I count my heartbeats in time with the clouds.
I hold the smoke.
Let it blacken my lungs.
Four-hundred thumps in the time they move four trees down.
Exhale, and accept
This rocky path to which I’ve clung.
The horses almost trip,
While dragging their carts.
Like a half-finished sentence,
Lost at the start.
I am stuck in this place,
The air thick with time,  
And lost in gravace.

When the sun is empty of you,
I find myself slipping,
Spinning downward as my feet
Reach for the earth below.

When the sun is empty of you,
I find myself teetering on the string
That ties us.
Grasping at everything that feels like our home.

When the sun is brimming with you,
I find myself,
automatistically,
Creating beauty with every part of us.

Balanced,
You hold me steady
As the wind roars
And the clouds open.

Drunk on your scent,
My biomorphic soul melts into the air
Until the sun is once again,
Empty of you.

When the earth swallowed me whole
I remember thinking,
“Nothing will ever be the same”
And I was right.
His possession became an obsession
And I was trapped within his walls
Decorated to look like my childhood room.
I felt sick.

How dare he take the most innocent parts of me,
And taint them with his hellfire.
How dare he steal the most delicate parts of me,
And crush them between his teeth.

All I wanted was to pick flowers.
To sing and dance in the breeze.
How dare he choose me.

I starved in silence
Until I couldn’t feel anything
Except the rumble in my stomach.
Numb to the screams around me,
Paralyzed by dead dreams.

I wish I never went outside.
I wish I never smiled.
I wish I never was born.