8/10/12

Are we simply treading water? Or would our love, as oxygen to me, rush to meet the surface of this stagnancy like a spinning orb of air from the deepest parts of us? Would it be our embolism? Would you punish my vanity and self-righteous heart that pulled me from you with clenched eyelids, my teeth as bits of gravel? Are we holding our breath, rubbing tongue to palette, to to savor a new beginning? Or are we mute, our lungs deflated from heaving our separate cries to the nature of young love? We never chase what is impassable. We never reach to touch the haloed edge of orange clouds. We kiss the soft skin before us and turn down our eyes in doubt. Would we look up and smile?

7/ 14/12

I cried the day I murdered you.
Like a broken bird I spread my arms wide to embrace the free air
and tried to endure the pain of flying.
I cried the month I murdered you.
Like a diamond whore I wore my shining smiles to greet each eager customer
but dropped them clattering like chains as I stole up the stairs to my bedroom.
I cried the year I murdered you.
Like a salted wound, my sluggish heart ticks aching with the loss of you.

When I saw your ghost on a sunny Friday at noon, it was as if you'd resurrected me along with you. Since the moment my eyes left yours, the thought of you has been my flight, my smile, the strong beat of my heart, and my own suicide all at once. We float together as ghosts in our secret world.

6/30/12

Her body shifts gracelessly in its soft lining of bulging, pale skin as she takes off her dress. She plucks bobby pins from her tangled hair and wrenches it from its black elastic band. She plops down at the edge of her bed like a drooping eyelid. She misses so much and fears so much more that her tired mind becomes the knotted gray metal of the shiny necklace he gave her for Christmas. Her heart becomes a time capsule of letters and snapshots and funny little phrases with a belly laugh in a second floor apartment. She shifts the focus of her autumn eyes from this to that, and finds that everything reminds her of him. Like the color green or kindness, a chalk-drawn menu, a red bra, addiction, a shameful cigarette, the Intro to an album or Lou Reed, Coma White or Chinese food, or anything that has to do with meth, or Pennsylvania. She sighs and looks at her hand as it reaches claw-like to clutch a blue permanent marker. She writes herself to him as if he lives inside of her journal, and blots her sorry state to the white door that he'll never answer. She closes his pages, closes her eyes, lays back on her empty mattress and moves her left leg in little circles like she's riding half of a bike.

Student Body

She sits between her sentences with troubled eyes and an ache between her elbows. She breathes in deep. Her ribs crack in three places. She places her hands on the folds of her face and whispers to her palms that she's sorry for everything. I sit in her head with a pen and paper and scribble down notes like she's giving lecture about how to behave improperly with a broken heart.

Wasted

I made a cloth doll from my favorite shirt. I wanted it to be soft and beautiful. I stuffed it with the fluffy organs of my favorite pillow. I wanted to know its heart. I sewed my favorite buttons to its face so its eyes would be happy and familiar. I unraveled an old friendship bracelet to lace its body together. I put the doll in a box and can't bear the sight of it.

Five Lines (Untitled)

She laughs like a secret that nobody knows.
I give her money and she spends it on me.
She lies often and gladly and without hesitation.
Her eight-limbed bed creaks with animal music.
She cries like a secret that everyone knows.

Hot

His eyes make me think of pornography. His mouth makes me think of his tongue. His arms make me think of stained wood, and the tight tension of his muscles, creaking and shivering as he holds his weight above my skin. His voice makes me think of admissions, confessions whispered in a deep and rattling bass in my ear wet with his kiss. His hands make me think of my breasts. His neck makes me think of the taste of his sweat like honeyed salt on my curling tongue in the dark room that we will never share. I hate pornography.