He licks me like I'm fragile.
Like I'm so unique, so delicate, so irreplaceable, that one false move and I could be gone forever.


He leaves prints on my skin and comes back to retrace them the next time we lie in bed together.
Surprised to see that his fingerprints existed on me hours before.
The first time I sat on top of him and wrapped my legs around his waist,
I heard seagulls in the distance.

I felt the last traces of sunlight fall behind the hills and I smelt the warm river water,
the smells of the earth kept me grounded,
placed me closer to the moment with him.
My body fell,
the way his skin seemed to trace mine so perfectly.
I didn't have to escape.
I could shoot my eyes open and watch the scenes of the empty beach
while I felt him push deeper inside me,
felt his teeth sink into mine,
felt his fingers curl
around the places I needed him to touch.
I inhale the moments where he keeps his eyes on mine,
where he says my name,
where his hands slowly slip my pants off.

I gulp them up and swallow them whole,
doing everything in my power to absorb the time I have.

The time he is here,
he is present
and he can't resist me.

I feel him in scenes,
I hold my breath waiting for the plot to change on me
and I kiss him in the spaces that smell close to home.

I wait until the morning sunlight slips in through my window,
the red sun illuminates the dashboard, his hand travels to my thighs
and I whisper what I want to say,
what I shouldn't say.

You were a storm that ruined her.
She was a piece of land who delightedly endured you.
She asked for rain, you gave her hurricane.
And after you're done, you left her ravaged.
But that's fine, she was an artwork;
And she still is.
She gave herself to you, but she'll never give herself to anyone else.

Your paint was the only thing spilled to the canvass;
Her canvass.
And if we are to dust her heart for fingerprints,
I'd be certain we'd only find yours.

sometimes love is not relentless
but like the soft smiles we keep
safe for goodbyes
it sleeps. a playful
child gathering breath.
don't you see that i love you?
but you will know it
in the ceilings of uncertain places
in the fingerprints on your beer
in that shirt you forgot about
but you'll wear it today. now.
our hearts will look onwards.
we are only at rest.

My eyelids seem
to be the strongest part of me.
When the rest of my body
falls
into the ocean
of blankets they
float open upon the white water
atop
the waves of sleep.
This is when you come back.
In this mattress I am a piece
of clay and I can still feel the deep indentations of where your fingers
wrapped themselves like Ivy around my hips.
Hips, that stuck out like white flags of surrender and
fell to the ground in a straight line.
I can still hear
you.
I am a broken record,
and your whispers are the only track that plays at this hour.
“You are fat”
“Look at how flat you are Emma, no boy will ever look at you.”
“You are ugly.”
These are the nights when I can
feel the spiderwebs your words wrapped around my ribs and
listen to the way my heart beats constricted
in its cage, your hand still clenched around it.
Can’t you see me bleeding?
Safety lies
beneath my eyelids but you pull them open
I can feel
your icy touch behind my eyes as I stare
coldly at the ceiling.
you demand to be heard.
Did you mean to put your words
in my pocket when you reached in to steal the sleep that was nestled there like crumpled dollar bills?
Do you realize that you stayed with me?
Can you take your stolen midnight hours back and place them on your pillowcase?
Will your eyelids close?
Or can you still hear my cries of protest as your soundtrack plays into the night?
I don't understand?
Did you think it wouldn't hurt me?
Or did you want to live forever,so you put your
fingerprints where you knew they wouldn't fade.

Nothing works out in the end.
All of us will be gone.
Our name will not be remembered.

The signs and lights will fade to black.
The Hollywood sign will collapse of old age, like us.
Poppies shrivel up, their red coats falling onto the scorched earth.
Grapes transcend into wrinkly sacs of bitter wine.

The way your hand slipped in mine,
the fingerprints will rub away.
Our heart beats slow,
diminish.
Our laughter evanesce,
wanes
as our voices descend past the Pacific ocean.

I trace the memories kept behind like fingerprints.
The love we had is now crushed and swept away by a wave of  
our indolence and insanity.
I go back to the time of sadness,
Because it was the sadness of her eyes the made me
happy
happy
happy
and somewhat sane…

All I have left are the mental photographs of what happened
and of wanting what could have been. I leave now with all the
things that I traced—things that can never be erased
like fingerprints that never  
ever had changed.
I sit here alone in this disease-ridden couch, with my
disease-ridden hope. And I will memorize your eyes,
blinking to the rhythm of you heartbeat, dancing in a starlit daydream—as  
I am wishing of a memory where you gave me  
everything you had
and where I offered you the pieces that were left
of me.

I kept all memories of you in a heart-shaped box,
where it is slowly crumbling as time goes by.
I kept all your secrets,
your playbook,
your cards,
your broken cassettes and cigarettes
our now and always,
your sad eyes and the happiness you had
and which made me smile again.

So maybe fingerprints and memories share a common thing. They say  
that “good things happen to those who wait”, I’d say keep on waiting,
*******, I have been waiting, and still all I’ve traced is  
the measurements of my  
indolence and insanity. So yeah, keep on waiting.

They say we leave fingerprints on the lives we touch.
I have been scrubbing at my skin for the past
eight months
trying to erase yours,
but now matter how hard I scrub,
I can still feel you as if
you were still here.

you're dangerous
but i like it
loving you
touching you
soaking you in
it's like licking chocolate
off of a knife

you draw blood
and then you dance in it
leaving red footprints
**all over my skin

I still avoid you in the hallways
To avoid all my inevitable nail biting
And stammering phrases

I remember how the hate coiled
In my intestines
Waiting to spring free
Out of my belly
But now the fire has subsided
And I smile and bit my lips

I still remember your birthday
And on any given day
I can recite all the late night messages you had sent me that I was too asleep to answer

And some nights I grew frantic with the knife
Trying to cut you out of my skin
That your fingerprints had so carefully engraved themselves on.

Other days I welcomed your curious stares
And our troubled conversations
Never once bringing up
How our pride had hurt each other
And how our lovesick past will always be in our minds

Another 24 hours and I go delusional
Holding your shadowed hand
And listening to your voice whisper sweet little lies in my ears.
But I hope your reality never becomes better than my imagination.

But you still avoid me in the hallways.

you never tried to analyze me.
you never took a flashlight to the darkest parts of my mind, never checked my aching bones to make sure they were alright.
you never checked my lungs to see that they were filled with water, never saw my shoulders, the burden they were under.
you only saw my face, readied and pristine, my face constantly smiling whenever i heard your name.
you never examined the backs of my eyes to see what keeps coming back, never checked my spine to see if something makes it crack.
you never checked my muscles, you never checked my heart. if you had dusted it for fingerprints, you would've only found his marks



[this heartbreak hollowed out my bones, and weighs a thousand pounds, it pushed me underwater, but your name, i can't quite drown out. you're trapped inside my head, i hope you do get out, you're the burden i am under, i really have no doubt. if you had checked for fingerprints, you wouldn't have been invested, if you had checked my heartstrings, you wouldn't have been tested.
you failed the science test this time and i'm so sincerely sorry. but if you had checked for variables you wouldn't have had to worry]