"I hear you—
your heartbeat against
mine right down
to my toes,
arrested and captive
by your sighs
calling for me—
Closer, come closer—
Just right there,
friction over static
in each hot
draw of breath,
in each flick
of our wrists,
in wanton whispers
of sweet nothings.
Mine. Be mine.

I feel you—
I feel your wanting
in the way your voice
shakes
as my name
escapes
your lips.
Consume me. Thoroughly—
enraptured as I am
by your ecstasy;
hands leaving nothing
untouched,
tongues leaving no inch
untasted.
Take me. Take me.

I reach out,
my very fingertips
over the blurs
of your incandescent
cheeks, flushed wildly
just as I
open my mouth,
narrate my desires,
lick my lips to prepare for
yours, past pixels—
I want more.
Keep your hungry
eyes on me
and your ears
to my rapture.
Give me more.

I let go.
Any and all
inhibition
lost in
frantic
thrusting
of the hips.
This craving,
intoxicating,
lightning
running through
my head.
Pink.
Blind *******.
Coming.
I’m *******.

Let’s get lost
in this high,
the echoing symphonies
of our lust
harmonizing languidly to
the feverish commands
our shameless orchestra
of sweating flesh
performs, this duet—
Yes, yes, YES—
Our risqué masterpiece
beyond the distance,
our bodies shaking,
our smiles satisfied.
The postlude comes
in sobering silence.

I promise you:
I’m the best you’ll ever have."

so you sew your melancholy shut –
pour your father’s ***
on the stitches
like you always do

i turn my back and bend over –
ache descending my backbone
where your kisses used to rest;
it recoils in instinct

as i keep on digging for the same mistakes
on skinfolds and chromatic bruises
and thin walls where i hung
my tendency to ache
scrubbed out of me like dead skin,
as i lie, washed, stripped, and tender
in these soft, celestine sheets;
i pepper bits and pieces of myself
to diffuse the hurting

but my pain is blinded;
yours, all-seeing
as i draw my three of swords
from my deepest deck of cards
but there’s already an epigraph
of your name on my clavicles
and you see how your all-elysian, moon-drenched lover
is all tainted, all this time,
and darling, how alive you felt
when you fell in love with this disaster
but the truth is staying in love
will always be your death.

and what i know to be deathless love
is now lost in our ghastly lights
and how we danced with liquid fire
long enough to feel it burn
but all roads lead to rome, darling –
all roads lead to ruin
and all the letters i wrote you are banners
burning in its cathedrals
as roman gods watched us
pick our limbs apart.

and do you think
we can love each other through this,
touch our way out,
love our way out of these

wars we waged —
burning houses,
mess we made
kisses dead in our stately wake
this love — this feeling
spilling like ether, leaving
squandered poems
all over the place.
had you known it all along
had you walked away?

but darling how alive you felt —
how alive we felt in love
but  one day you’ll call it crucifixion
and i’ll call it back  my death.

and we fall like sacred dust,
a bedlam of debris.
and i draw my three of swords:
dead-cold steel
and paper-soft sorrows.


do you think we have it in us to love each other out of this?

i let go of myself mid-air,
suspended like a plastered sun goddess —
i long to be smaller. younger. incorporeal
but grief is royal mantle dragged in the mud,
draped on my shoulders, down to my limbs:
like a pair of sunbeams gone astray
and the sun has long left without
so much as a sorry letter.

still, i feel its hands
creeping to the parts of my lungs left untouched.
its glare spreads like rust,
telltale in the daylight glow.

soon, i will implode from all this alien warmth
like a colony of bats, a revolution for the dusk.
soon, the sky will recognize this ancient sadness
throbbing inside a mortal body
like a rejected ***** wanting to escape.

i let go of myself mid-air:
vivid and ugly under the softest parts of sunlight –
all dying in the dusk in slowest motion;
it washes over me. anoints. screams out in mourning
screams out ‘no’.

but i have taken my flights and fall.


i let go of myself mid-air.

skipping back and forth
the stages of grieving
but my body is bottomless —
endless where it hurts the worst.
it continues to grow
like a skin abnormality
over which i trip, head first i tumble down
these words in repetition
their despair, in repetition
in ever so artless ways.

too many indefinite things
gone too visceral
gone too deep these skin layers —
there is an (over)production of them,
to make room for
more. more. more. grief
popping here and there:
an obstacle course.
a grafted stem. a blunder.
what deformities might i uncover
as i dredge myself clean,
as i mow over me?

but my body is bottomless,
in perpetual, grave disquiet —
endless where it feels the worst.

today, demeter is nothing but
a bewildered ghost in a haunted meadow,
skinning flowers as they weep:
they're neatly lined as in an execution,
the creek, a boneyard,
a lair of sorrows for her dazed *******.

today, the sun desperately combs
through tree branches
for an abandoned nest of grief
but its hands just stray too far
and poke at a meadow's wound —
nails cutting through graying skin.

this is a poem written by a bystander.
this is a poem written by a witness.
this is a poem written by the victim.
the world blurs its lines today
and demeter is nothing
but a forgotten ghost
in a town painted new.

Sweet one, do I still owe you the same dreams?

I've grown kinder and gentler — inward. I've stepped out of my bruises, barefoot and cleansed: a mortal girl out of ***** foam. I've learned to soften the aching. I've learned to let go of things, including who I wasn't meant to be. I am no longer you. I am no longer your failures. Why then, do I still feel the need to chase the distant dreams you wished for? Is it because I still want them somehow — or because I feel like I owe those dreams to someone I no longer am?

1
my spine is a bridge that burns —
bones most breakable, like memories of
driftwoods
collected as a kid,
i now feed to a bonfire
of blistered cyclamens.

2
my spine is a bridge
of no certain grandeur
nor history.
it burns away
and falls,
quietly in the night,
like an unknown laborer.

some of us die this way.

3
the reason for this poem
evades me,
but the heart must write of its sorrows
undisclosed to the soul.
they remain to be
unrecognized parts
of a burning town.

4
now, i speak in tongues
unfamiliar to myself.
i write a poem i'm bound to forget.
i stand in the baptism
of a child i do not know.
i do it anyway.

5
i bring her driftwoods
from the water, mourning under
a burning bridge;
soon the last beam falls apart
and i fall apart
in a forgettably graceless light
this: a sorrow with no name,
i write it anyway.

this: a sorrow undisclosed.
i tell it anyway.

this: a sorrow unrecognized.
i feel it anyway.

the dusk wastes its pity on me. in its muted retiring lights, i have learned a terrible habit of forcing poems out of my mouth,
when maybe all i wanna do is be as quiet as the wounds nesting inside my head.

pandora opens her chest at midnight:
it is a box left out in the rain,
a wound unstitched in despair for october,
a small voice hushed by forlorn hours.

and dead gods forget so easily,
but
pandora still opens her chest at midnight
and the walls huddle to look at an ugly wound
left open to bleed all over
dusty pink cosmos flowers.
and drapes huddle, too,
to look at a nest of sorrows creeping about,
as though a wake, a vigil,
a somber watch that only ends
with all of my bones breaking.

but dead gods forget so easily,
and dead girls forget so easily,
and i forget so easily
all the aching hours that had kissed my skin
and their graceless, moonlit pull,
and i am left to lie
languishing on soft, breakable spots.

and so pandora closes her chest:
a box to never be opened, a vault behind a frame.
a flash of stray light on a wound sealed shut. safe. secure.
there is no space for conspicuous melancholies.
there is no space for anything —
there is no space for hope.

and the gods forget so easily.