La Petit Poisson

I called it treason
when you tried to love me well,
my heart in revolt.

And you could undo

each moment

I knotted together,

untether the strings

that keep you here,

while you spin stories

like planets

around the heads

of whoever will listen

to your siren-song

for long enough

to tie their ribbons

around your little

finger.

And you can lie to me,

line after line,

about the who of you,

and the why,

but all strings unravel

like truth does

in the face of itself.

I handed my heart
like it was a coin, and you
were collecting change.

Each exhalation
is as much of a promise
as your words have been.

And every time
it is him, I move a step
closer to the door.

If I had met you
in the waiting room
of a doctor’s office,
would you have
locked eyes
and smiled through
your sickness,
followed my full
as if it was a remedy?
Or in the middle of
a line at a market,
your grocery cart
overflowing, would
you have reached
up and out to touch
my hand in some
quiet recognition,
abandoned your
cardboard cutout
life, and followed me
out the sliding glass doors?
Would you tell me the truth
when I asked you any old thing,
like mine was the only heart
you laid your skin against,
like your own chest might
collapse on itself, a broken
heart, at the thought of telling
even
one
lie?
Tell me,
would you ever be truth?

And beauty is 9/10ths
illusion,
as possession is to the law,
the unsettled sediment
of our cosmetic cure
for the life
on which we settled.
And I could have called you
pretty
like some common thing,
but the sloping soft
of your jaw
tells me stories
at night
about the history
that stored your genetics
in the empty pocket at the back
of the book.
Your eyes an allusion
to a faraway place,
some novel I have not yet
bothered to read.
Your mouth, an unkept
promise or secret,
and I never can tell which.
And the flame you fan out,
the red sway over your shoulders,
a stop sign color that you meant to
say go.
All mixed messages and media,
you could have been a roadway
sign,
and would you direct me
home?

And you swallow

truth

like it’s

some

bitter

ejaculate

from a man

you don’t love.

The feel

of fingers

on flesh

down my throat,

the eternal

clutch

and grasp

of all

that love

is meant to be

choking

me

with it’s

incomplete.

You aren’t

whole.

Your love

is a broken

sacrifice

of what

you never

will be.

Contorted

half-circles

build hearts.

But I

won’t

take

less

than

forever.

So,

let your tongue

take refuge

between

my lips,

seek solace

in my skin,

sate

your thirst

in the

golden

stream

of honey

between my thighs.

For there is no

rival to

my warmth,

nor

to

my

chill.

You spared the sparrow,

a sign of rebellion

taken too young,

the raised skin, your

winged scar just beneath

your shoulder,

and I may have loved

your skin the most,

all chocolate-speckled

honey,

or the way you smelled

like pennies

when you spent too many

hours outside,

or how your laugh would

fill a room,

split open the sides

of you

and burst forward.

You were all fire

followed by ice,

a planet set too

close to the sun,

and I never knew

if I was the moon

or some star-stirred

explorer,

but I felt your shifting

climate as if I was 

on the ground

and running.

And I may have

pulled out

the ways in which you

failed,

confetti

for a party that required

no RSVP.

One by one, you choked

out the lights,

strung together,

in loving you,

until the flickering

lightning bugs

were all I

had left.

And no one can do

best

by me,

some personal failure

I have not yet corrected,

because I can’t help

but press my body

up against the trigger,

no matter who is holding

the gun.

You are a match

stick,

love,

and I could strike

you

against

some rough interior wall,

watch the heat of you

eat away the rest.

But would you stop there,

or would you swallow up

the whole of it,

leave behind

a trail

of ash

and ember?

In the spaces you left
empty, I crafted a second
form, a body of half-truths
built on the back of what
you once promised.
I found some new you,
threadbare and roughly
gathered, cradled her
cleanly, all cause with
no effect. I never knew
the terror of treason,
the vast destruction
of aimed demolition,
only ever the steady,
slow deterioration
into smaller spaces.

I could have done this

easy, the way the heart

unfolds itself in the

face of anything like

love; an involuntary

physical response

like an exhalation

is to the inhale,

and a cough is to

the choke.

I could have done you

easy, the way your mouth

or legs part in the 

face of anything like 

lust; your hard-wired

reaction to heat

like sweat or

labored

breathing.

But you only ever named

me, the tug in your gut

and the swell in your chest,

as something of a struggle,

no ease in swallowing

what could be truth

after your throat

constricted

around the shape

of half-way to empty.

And why would I ever

wrap myself up in

this thematic paper,

tie the ribbon around 

my throat, when it was

you who halted the

holidays with all of

the tender parts of you

wrapped into some other

set of skin.

And I wonder if the

yellowing skin of an aged

bruise mirrors the heart,

and why healing at its

end would look like rot.

And there are days
where eating feels
a lot like losing
the hand
I’ve been dealt,
and it isn’t even
that I didn’t try to
leave the table,
withdraw myself
from the game I
started at age 8;
but my frame does
not wilt away
like it used to do,
and being a bird
in the mouths of
those who say what
they wish, feels
like the less of me
takes up more room
in their hearts
than the full of me
ever could.
And I know the way
sick sounds, as
I wind my words in
the opposite direction,
a distraction from
the hidden agenda
of whatever is worst
may as well win.
And I make little
of how little
I’ve ever eaten,
use laughter and
light as a means
to an end.
And I have pulled
my chair away,
moved over to
too many tables
where the ace up
my sleeve did
me no good,
but there are days
where giving in to
what might be best
feels a lot like betrayal.

The hidden nature
of all things
and their blurred border,
permeable under the
underneaths of pressure,
as we tuck away tears into
the back of our throats,
swallow the guilt in as many
gulps as it takes.
And our truths are only ever
as true as we are,
cradled in the hollow
frame of our ribs,
we hold back;
I resisted osmosis,
tried to keep from absorbing
a single word you had to say,
and it makes no matter if you
would have saved me.
I have donated my life to
the experiment of existing
without interference from
those who mean well.

The stars wept
when you left.

You broke silence
and my heart.

When I was a child,

I would sometimes tear

off the petals

from flowers

just for the sake

of destruction;

I took pride

in my ability

to deconstruct

those that had not

even yet bloomed,

peeling them back,

opening them up,

a flower spread open

before it even knew it was ready.

And maybe I haven’t changed much,

substituted people for flowers.

They always go and die,

fall apart,

when they could

just be grateful

I picked them at all.

And I am injecting

love

into the moments

you did anything but,

reconstructing what it

means

to swallow down your

sting on a sore throat.

And the truth is

that I should

give more

rather than less,

but there is more

acid in my stomach

than there is trust,

and I cannot stop churning

over what you might do next.

And I know it is not fair

to keep you pinned down

to yesterday,

but when you are against

that cork board,

I at least know what you are.

If you could get far enough

away,

maybe you would have seen

it coming.

I am a slow death,

and I am injecting

love

into the moments

you did anything but.

I wrote her awful
and pretty and
in between,
with love and hatred
crossing t’s and
dotting i’s.
For as much
as I could hope that
pretty is as pretty does,
our genetics are resolute,
do not reassemble in keeping
with our hearts,
the chromosomal consistency
under the pressure of our shifting
moral fortitude, the avalanche of
our broken pieces,
and still our faces do not change.

Ruminations count as little more

than runes, or some other

mythical way to gaze

at our navel.

I take shortcuts to shoulder my

love of language, construct

metaphors around the ways

a heart breaks.

But I never string together theory

about the human condition

and what it might say

about any of this.

And I have yet to read a single line

that lined up the reasons why

loneliness chokes most

of our lives away;

I have yet to see any arched doorway

that allowed entry or arrival

to the revelation of whether

goodness grows up from

our gut,

or if we pluck flowers

from other gardens

and pass them off

as our own.

There are gaps between ribs
where hurt and heat and
determined fingers
can push their way through,
if only my anatomy could
craft a better defense
like laughter or thicker
skin.

i. I could count to ten 

in Roman numerals, 

as if one and I

could fill up space

or pass the time

or carry any feature 

at all that could keep

them from swallowing

each other whole,

some unquenchable thirst.

ii. You spoke of twos

as if only our collision 

would bring your heart

any ease, that the oneness

cut you open and

our coupling

could cure you

of whatever fever you caught 

in some other set of arms.

iii. She made no mention

of plurality as plans

were crafted into planes,

and the distance evaporated 

into jet fuel emissions; 

but she never said 

a third body was hidden

in the underneath of the bed.

iv. We were both wasted

on the other’s exhaustion,

stretched too thin against

the railings of too

many men with too little

give.  But she did her best

to break what she could.

v. They never even saw

the her and I of it,

that it was coming

whether we knew the

word ‘ready’ or not,

and we didn’t.

vi.  Her destruction spread

out into the city,

rotted out homes and

hearts as she watched

on wide-eyed.

vii. I could never decipher

the meaning of her sighs

as she cried about every

other face but mine.

viii.  Winter came in the high

of my summer, and I suffered

through spring on her chill.

ix.  She slept on the front porch

with the half-alive, all fear.

x.  I left the door open and waited.

I have read

death lines

into the palms

of every hand

I have held,

plotted out a path

to a resolution,

because goodbye

is a certain

affliction,

but you do not

stumble over

that which you

expect.

I have been taken

by surprise

before,

when the answer

to how long

is a piece of

string,

arrived around

the throats

of who I loved

most.

And since, I have 

predicted ends

like most girls

predict beginnings,

passed off my

acceptance of our

frailty as

some higher

form of reasoning.

I have reeled fish

into my boat,

slipped fingers

into scales and fins,

with every intention

of its release,

and you could call

it cruel,

to start only

to necessitate

the end,

but if I spent

my life on the

half-empty promises

of I’ll never leave,

I would have filed

bankruptcy long ago.

And some may say,

that love is

not a sport,

but winning

is an end game

that you called

before it could

call you.

And it is the

absolute of endings

that absolves you

of being fool enough

to try at all,

and going always seemed

a lot like knowing.

Little tremors

in the underneath

of your skin,

as some emotion

wraps itself around

the muscles

nearest your

mouth

and trembles.

And I remember

the devastation

only shaking

can cause, the

broken streets

of that city,

a heart split open

and scattered with

debris,

and do you shake

like the earth

does if you

stop holding

back feeling,

thinly veiled;

is it violent

and deadly

or do you roll

cleanly underneath

the surface,

all fear and

no delivery?

I have a hard

time leaving rocks

face down,

and I may have

tempted

the nature

of too many,

pulled out

their disasters,

strand by strand,

because I know

no other way

of knowing.

And I live in

some measured fear

of the shatter

that awaits

any pressure

I exert

on hearts

and their

terrible

empty

spaces.

Love brings up for release and healing all things unlike itself.

-someone wise and clever

And I was the scrap
of paper on which
you scribbled down
your name and number,
folded over into itself,
passed off to a boy
you called pretty.
I remember my
small recognition
of what might pass,
as I took the bet on
your better parts that
you loved me as you
said, and then you
backed away from
the table altogether;
the stakes rose up
too high for you to
hold your breath,
like the waters of
that river in spring.
And I was left for
dead, to drown or
drift, in the destruction
loving you left behind;
And sense cannot be
assembled when there
is none, but I tried each
night to reconstruct the
reason, as you sobbed
into telephones over
what you had done.
And I do not feel it now
as it was then, the open
wound, infected with rot,
my heart could barely take
it; now scar tissue and
distaste, certain distrust
of your instrumental loving
passed off easily to too many
hands, and that is where
infection festers. And my
cauterized heart calls it
easier than it once did,
as I predict the way you
may play the hand you
were dealt. And I waited
for you to abandon that
which did not serve you,
but you carry your demons
around in your back pocket,
the buzz and hum of their
demands, in some steady
search for the next intrusion
into the life I thought
we crafted. And do you
hold it against me that
I cannot help but hold
the spaces of your heart
that you hold spare
against you? That I feel
crowded even by your
fleeting affections for
anyone who is not me,
and I do not know if
this is just the who of
my I am or if you broke
the part of me that could
be happy with something
other than all. And I know
you do not like to know
the way in which I shattered
under the weight of our
demolition, but this is
still a hazard site, and
I am only just reassembling
the pieces.

And I do nothing

halfway,

a side-effect

of my disordered

brain;

everything is full-on,

full-forced, fully.

Even when I fall,

I fall with all of me,

limbs flailing behind,

trying to grab onto air,

coming up empty.

And I have wished

on the corners

of your lips,

on the rounded

edge of your words,

that my hands might

return with the

glinting promise

of you wholly. 

But those demons

that we extricate

from your heart

nightly,

the foul beasts

that keep tearing

your life apart

and then asking

to be called

by your name,

well, they had me

against that same

proverbial bed

that I made,

and chose to lie

until I didn’t.

Conducted my life

as if it was a pagan

ritual, as I sacrificed

the girl I had become

on some imagined altar,

preventative measures

to keep them from

ever coming back in.

But our hearts, 

they carry,

the missing shape

of whatever presses

into them,

and their haunting

hush reverberates,

a soft echo

around the exterior

of any goodness

I try to give.

And I thought that I had 

sealed up my heart

with boards and putty,

an abandoned home

made impenetrable,

kept company on the

front porch,

but offered no way in,

and only one way out,

down a trap door

or escape shute.

So don’t ask me

how you made your way

into my heart.

You found tunnels,

crafted make-shift ladders

from drift-boards and seaweed,

swallowed up the oceans

that kept me safe

with your immeasurable thirst,

but then you got sick,

vomited all of it up

in some boy’s bed.

And I thought that

maybe if I wasn’t an ocean,

but a puddle 

or a pond 

or even a lake,

you wouldn’t get so sick

at the sight of me.

And still, there are moments

when I catch you looking,

and I know exactly

who and what you are,

the weight of your heart,

the dense mass you carry

on your shoulder,

as you try

and try

to be what you

said you could be.

You inhale deeply,

and then cough,

cough,

cough,

hacking up the lung

that lets you live,

like you did the vine

that is your goodness,

as I watched on

for months

in some state

of abject fear,

and now its

green leafy conquest

making its mark

on the landscape

of your life,

and you just

may have gotten

through the thick

of this, found your

sea-legs just in time,

before we both

abandoned ship

and drowned.

I always wanted a love 

that did not quit; 

that would look

square in the

round of my eyes

and ask for more,

that would offer up

only defiant resistance 

to all of my attempts 

to keep a safe distance,

advance with intent,

and lay siege on this

heart.  

That would untether 

the trap wires 

I have strewn across the floor, 

and disarm the armory 

of this police state 

without riot,

undo the hegemonic 

rule of my heart, 

all unspoken power,

the implied threat

of leaving,

looming,

a hurricane or

fighter jet

over some uncharted 

piece of land 

in some unnamed ocean, 

and I could have sworn 

you had the artillery fire 

in one pocket 

to undo a lifetime 

of my military tactics,

that your simple exhalation

would smoke out a city,

and that I had found

some star-promised

rival to my own,

but you sacked this city

and flittered back to glitter,

the cheap shimmer against

the uncovered spoils of

geographic destruction,

treasure trove and ruin,

all gemstone and jewel,

a sparkling gravel path

that would have led

you home,

if the flat glimpse

of glimmer

had not distracted

your forward march.

And now you are anything

but unwavering,

and I would have laid

my life on the promise

that your strength was

your strong-suit, and

it knew no bounds.

And my heart laid

down like I typically

lay out tricks,

and you detonated

all of your explosives,

made fireworks

(and short work)

of my heart,

some rocket fuel

to get you through

a night or two

you spent alone.

And all I ever wanted

was a love that

did not quit.

Contusion constellation
across the round of your
throat, strawberry and plum,
the blossom of stars peeking
out underneath your petal
white, your own magnolia
bloom. And I carried you
south, down highway and
dusty road, in soft hope
the heat could heal, that
the weight of our choices
would spin you back around,
and you would stumble back
into the life you promised,
all remorse at having been
gone too long. But that
fever that took you in the
chill of your winter, only
crawled higher up the rungs
of your spine, a vine choking
the ladder of your life, and I
have waited as you hacked
at this heart, nightly, some
sacrificial ritual of your
truth. Your spring bound
fingers, coiled around every
glinting piece of metal you
uncover in gravel pits, and
I do not know how you kept
hold of my hands with yours
so full of scraps, but the clutch
of your fist is still wound tight,
an imprint of your grasp, its
own muscle memory. And you
amble in and out of our life,
your goodness and devotion,
the stop and start clock,
abundance and drought,
like your father in your youth,
all give and then goodbye.
And I hold onto hope more
tightly than I do your trembling
fingers, count to ten backwards
and forward, as I collect the
scattered glass of my breath,
try to reconstruct the bottle
you dropped at my feet
when you chose broken
over some semblance of
whole. And loving me so
much that your organs
swell like your knees
is sugar spun, but that
internal inflammation is
only feeling, no labour
in loving and I would
rather you love me well
than love me
easy.

And it is in the telling,
more than the story told,
and I tried to pass it off
as if it was my own, not
knowing my life was half
removed, the burden of
missed moments, and I
have fragments that create
no whole, assembled into
some makeshift pattern
of a life.
You speak with words in
their partial concealed
space, all talk and no
truth, hold it up in
outstretched palm,
some halfway offering
of a line you elected to
follow.
So speak sweetly, all
candy-coated and
saccharine smooth,
a promise that the
shape your mouth
makes to sound out
vowels will carry a
matching meaning,
goodness and light,
on the tip of your
tongue.

This life, stilted and
tilted, the broken baton
passed down one line
to the next, as if we ever
accumulate enough to
justify the weight. You,
honeysuckle golden, and
rickety knees, unhinged,
are your only sign of the
struggle, the lasting mark
of living as hard as you hate
or love or fuck. And you have
always laid out second best
and hoped on hope it would
cover the length of each
naked moment. And if in
the streets, they were to see
you on me, they would call
me a whore and avert their
eyes, all southern discomfort
at the sight of my skin
exposed, as the fabric of
your try inches up my thigh,
as your hands might if
you ever stopped grabbing
at straws.

Hidden under the hide,
in plain sight, the telling
division of your parts from
each of my corresponding
alignments. In keeping close,
no company like yours, and
deeply into my teacup life, you
sink. I take you in through sips,
even swallows, and spill down
easy, the pink of your neck,
knotted into a promise.

Your life is a graveyard, 

haunted by ghosts,

skeletons clawing

their way up from

under the dirt,

and swallowing up

the ankles off any

foot that pushes deeply 

enough into your soil

to make a mark, 

and it shifts

so easily under the

pressure of their

push.

You are the bones 

you have buried

and the bodies you have

hidden in the underside

of your skin, and

the rot of decay

has set into the

marrow of your

life.

And I am not some living

dead, resurrected on the

blood lust of your sin,

no half-alive or empty

promise.  I burst forth

in blooms, white and

gold petals spread open,

sprouting up in the

spaces you spent

on some other life

or lack.

You are the secrets

you covered in dirt

when you hid away

the parts of your heart

that offered a life

that stretched endless,

an afterlife that had

no semblance of 

completion.

And you may hide behind

some lack of thought,

evasion and avoidance,

a headstone to mark

the spot you laid your

truth to rest,

but you are every horrible

thing done to and by

just as much as each

moment of goodness 

you ever delivered or

received. 

Your life is a graveyard, 

and you, with all of your

mismatched parts, a

terracotta doll, 

with the bloated

belly of death, 

rise up daily, with

blood and bile to spit

from your lips.

And how many people

hold their breath

when they pass you

in the street,

and is it out of

reverence for your

loss, or some hushed

awe over the honey

green of your eyes?

A shut away,
as my body
takes direction
from my throat,
the certain revolt
under my skin,
and I am contagious
for twelve hours more,
this infection taking
hold, as I play host.
We sleep in different
rooms, walls to keep
me from spreading
what it is I’ve caught,
and is it her heart wrapped
up in the strings
on which I tug,
or is that her hand
pulling apart its own
fishnet trap.
She writes me love
poetry and talks
herself to sleep
to some heart she
dizzied in her spinning
arrival into a life called
ours. I have moments
of clarity where close
closes in on my heart,
and it is her, always her,
in the middle of a thought.
I hold my breath when it
fails to catch in my throat,
and wait for health
to colonize my life
in the way the lack of it
has.
And I, in all of my moments,
never did feel alone even on
my own, and how is it now
that solitude imitates isolation,
my loneliness, momentary
lapses in company, some
forget-me-not of the knot
left in my stomach.
The hours eat away at the
marrow of my life, my love,
but these cells split faster than
they die, and tomorrow will
carry us lightly into
some lighter space.

And if our hearts
would respond
to intruders in
the same way
that our bodies
do, swell of cells,
white blood and
anemic, then maybe
we would not end up
so broken. No immune
response on the ready
to protect the palpitating
tissue from careless blows
and deliberate damage.
No triggered reaction
from the cords of our
chests to our feet telling
us to flee for the sake of
the root. If our hearts could
craft some measure of
resistance, then maybe
we wouldn’t burrow into
the skin of our lovers,
our own sort of disease.
But we are all without
defense, only ribs, with
their open spaces, to
offer any stop-gap measure,
and so we create our own
tragedies in the cavities
of the places that we love.

The spinning
top of her skin
under the press
of the tips of my
fingers, touch for
touch, parted and,
she starts again and
again, an engine that
will not turn over in the
space below her gut.
The mechanics of her
need, an easy oiled
machine, rolling her out
and in, as she peaks and
speaks some gasping,
forgotten language,
her face blossoming
into flowers pink, red,
and purple. I could pick
each one, find the daffodils
hidden in her skin, the golden
bursts of her life, a bouquet of
each moment she swallowed down
instead of taking the taste on her tongue.

She picks at her skin,
the open wound of loving,
cauterized by shame.

I peel back her pale,
the underneath exposed pink
and some sinner red.

Swatch pressed in to match
the bruised and beating echo,
colours of her heart.

This bedroom painted
in keeping, order to keep
her skin from wilting.

She sizes me up,
all quiet madness and fear,
and she comes up dry.

Kindness is foreign;
a custom or currency
that does not carry.

Barbed hearts,
and you never
told me not to
pick it, all you
ever said was
that I could
always
drop it, let it fall,
hit dust and earth.
As if I am not
tethered to this
ship, and I may
make it look easy
as I veer away, my
warmth some hidden
jewel, but it cuts my
underneaths into
bite-sized portions.
My own combustion
engine heart,
the swell and retreat,
and you can never
seem to take the heat
of my mechanics
in full swing.
Do I frighten you,
spur a craving for
some lazy love,
real enough in
place of truth,
and you shimmer
at any old thing,
and I may be a
litmus test for your
heart, for your hurt,
but I loved you like
you don’t want to love
yourself, and you keep
holding up grass and root
in the place of flowers,
and words last about
as long as intentions.

Scavengers in the home
of some life lost or
uprooted, and the life’s
accumulation chokes
the cavity of the frame,
as strangers gut the
fish of its memories.
And I float, ghost like,
almost undetected
amidst the congestion
of bodies and trinkets,
the destruction of a life
in greedy fingers sits
in the back of my throat,
a ball of misplaced hurt.
I leave with nothing,
the weight of their life
pressure enough.

Ice blocks
flavoured
dream,
citrus and sweet,
I eat,
the quiet realization
that I don’t even like
orange on my tongue,
but take the tart
if only to taste
cream,
and metaphors
crawl out of cardboard
boxes,
crooked spines
and sideways,
they slide into
the cracks,
of what was once
whole, and now
found.
I don’t do down,
and that ladder,
all popsicle stick
constructed,
is sticky and
orange tinted,
and your fingers
always take more
than they touch.
So break whatever
back you want,
but I have no more
bend.

Talk is cheap,
they say in every
tone, all certainty
and stolen wisdom,
borrowed maybe,
with no intention
to give it back.
But you speak, and
words lay me down,
flattened under their
press, the swell of
syntax, language
languishing in my
lungs. I cry out
or gasp, some
audible sign that
I have been hit,
and you sit so
plainly and proud,
it is as if you carry
no clue of their shape,
as you assemble lies,
half truth, and the
whole truth avoided.
Stories are easy, light
to lift, all warmth
constructed on a lie
without any of the
work. Their barbed
deception as words
do their worst
under breast and bone,
lock and key.

Her voice quieted,
through wall and
the hallway’s embrace,
the exposed brick
of its inner arm
wrapped easy
around our bedroom,
as she calls to soothe
some ego bruised
or maybe even heart,
but it is more her own
than any other face
even though she would
never say it.
Her heart may crave
duality,
or at the very least,
alternate realities,
and I swallow truth,
spit it into sinks
when the texture
goes foul, and she
whimpers wounded
when I kiss her fully,
her frailty under the
weight.
The conflicting rhythm
of our palpitating
hearts, chasing a beat
that leaves her only
just,
breathless.
Catching some
semblance of
air on the edge
of her windpipe,
too thick to roll
down easy
that throat
and the dry
wall of my mouth,
trembles, shudders
against the quake
of our hearts
or bodies.
Distressed tap
of tongue,
if I knew Morse
code,
I would be calling
out into the still,
the certain click
of my dash-line and
pause,
a sad song
or poetry,
a cry for help
or goodbye.
Would you come
running from this bed,
eyes wild with fright
at the thought
or would you lie
still under quilt
and key,
fretting over
tantrums and
little piles of
dust and glitter.

Fractured glass,
my crystalline heart,
eternal spring of
capillary, I could
pour blood or water
or something altogether
sweeter.
You have tasted,
taken some nightly
refuge in the pool
of my skin,
not yet tasting the
swelter of this
southern heat.
I write endless
and speak it as
steadily to you,
with pink boxed
ears.
My fluids frozen
again, in the face
of any other face
but mine,
and the thaw sets
in like summer will,
pulls the strawberry pink
of your underneaths
up through your egg white
paper thin.
Blush or burn,
my full is unyielding,
and it is still like it was
at 19, some token version,
there is no rival to my warmth
nor to my chill.
(And summer advances,
all artillery fire and dragon
child, the heat and
sweet of some
promise on the tongue.)