red string.

if I died today
my love 
unexpressed
would bloom
from my chest
and sow seeds
of a thousand 
new worlds
and in them
we are whole
together
hand in hand
the red string
that binds us
twisting between
stars and planets
our soles have
never trod
we wander in
unknowing
of the little Love
which bid us
grow

home.

any house could be a home,
they said, but
you made me believe it.

all my other tenants,
“ah but the windows don’t catch the
evening light the way i like it,”
“the floorboards creak and
cry in protest when i walk,
“don’t you just wish the walls
were painted some lovely color?”

you waltzed into the front door,
drew back the curtains,
peeked beneath the soft carpets,
ran gentle fingers over dusty walls,
“what a beautiful home,
might i stay?”

conversation.

you speak my body’s language,
as fluently as though it were your mother tongue.
you hear my body whisper, muffled under blankets and hidden by my clothes.
sometimes, in the dark, you sing me songs and my skin dances to the sound.
sighing, softly, “I love you.”
and then we dream, and even in the silence, our bodies speak.

drought.

you taste like magic;
like electric tendrils
snaking through my tongue
to converge in the tips
of my fingers where they touch
your waiting skin
in a frenzy of sound and
sensation
the smell of your breathing
like the burning of oxygen
in my lungs.
we could burn the night sky
alive
if we could just
live inside the thunder
and the clouds.
we could hide from the sun
and all her expectations
in the eye of the storm,
in the quiet calm before
destruction,
when everything must be
rebuilt,
and the floods leave the
dry earth
wanting more.

camping.

I want
to sit by the warmth
of the fire of your soul
to warm my aching bones
in your heat
to sing a song
without words
from my mouth
with no tongue
to touch the sky
of your skin
mapped with constellations
of all the places you’ve gone
to sink into darkness
with weary head
and thumping heart
to forget days
and nights
and space
and motion
all the pittances of life
to cut the thread of time
with the lover’s knife

immersion.

I read the lines which curved your lips just so
but where I kissed your fresh ink you blurred
into something incomprehensible,
illegible in the same way the passion behind a sigh
can only be felt, and not recorded.

I turned the pages of your skin and read the stories you told,
kept pace with the way you twisted and turned
under my eager hands, prying eyes,
spread your wings open until I could see your waiting spine.

I pressed the sharpness of your corners against the
softness of my chest and breathed in the smell of you,
like a memory I’d kill to touch just one more time,
something so almost-real, I could taste it.

I felt your weight in my hands,
read your over-simplified summary as though it could ever
contain the vastness of you and the secrets
you might tell if I opened you up and opened myself up
and tried to feel it.

repetition.

saying that there is love out there for everyone, is like saying that every star is a part of a constellation
when the truth is that some of us were just born, ignited, without close proximity to anyone who could see us shining.
and don’t you dare tell me that every cloud has a silver lining, because I’ve looked at the sun until it hurt my eyes, and blinded me for days,
and yet still, I could cry, and it didn’t matter that there wasn’t any rain.
don’t you tell me that things get better with time because I’ve counted the sand in my hourglass,
time after time, 30 minute intervals turned to days and turned to weeks and months,
just turning it over and over to see how much it took.
but when I sat it back on the shelf and resumed my place in line,
turned out that nothing was different and the hurts were still mine.

finalities.

I dreamt of you,
and upon waking,
at felt as though you’d just stepped from my room.
as though your hand had only left my forehead,
and the softness of your footsteps,
the quiet of your absence,
had woken me and left me hence.
knowing that I could run out my door,
calling your name,
arms open,
and you’d not be there.
you’d never be there again.

mirage.

I fell in love with the color of your eyes,
the soft light of morning barely kissing your skin.
a gentle almost-touching of fingertips to waiting lips,
but no…

I fell in love with careless words uttered in passion,
whispers, breathtaking, on over-eager ears.
a quiet solace in unknowing, promises sworn to never be broken,
and so..

I fell in love with a stranger I’ve yet to know,
a reflection in a mirror I’ve told exactly what to show.
the steady downfall of awakening, open eyes and closing heart.
I go.

blight.

I can’t say the words I want to say
so they sit on my tongue and as they rot
and dance their dirty death dance around my
aching head
my mouth decays
and with it go the lips which kissed your eyelids
as you dreamt lightly in my bed
and with it the cheeks which blushed at
your every flattery and swelled with every
grin reflected perfectly on your face
and I just hope
I just hope
that when it’s all gone
and bare
and reeks of something putrid
that there won’t be anything left
to look into a mirror and remind me of myself
and that in apathy and bare judgement of
blinding white bone and cranial infrastructure
I can find some peace and quiet