paranoid522

All I wanted was for you to stay— rest against the glass house & count every freckle in the sky with me. I was trying to create my own miracle— staring at your goodbye hitting the window like birds & becoming a selfish disease. The sky was on fire & every ashy ambulance was taking you away— I loved you. Guernica bombed itself into your heart— I waited by the phone to hear your anger instead of all the tornado sirens over the radio.

I imagine the coffee pot overflowing as I read a book— that my domesticity leads to a house drowning. I rush into the kitchen— I am looking for a reason to panic, to feel myself slipping into palpitations like a warm bath. There is nothing there. Everything is how I left it— the tired cabinets with downturned eyes, the unsterile sponge mocking me, my mother crying out in silent pain from the next room, my river of anxiety still flowing around my feet.

Our beginnings and our ends, together, your eyelash, found on my skin, your quiet breathing in the night, your gentle arm curved around me, soft sunshine seeping through the curtains, welcoming us to morning.  

I'd been drug sniffed addled & otherwise by agents in deep blues demanding points of origin questioning allegiance mis- or re- placed hope to heart to god like father thought or hand to fist to mouth like mother taught as if no one had colored those pale shades of in between so I shook as all good books taught me stretched taught toward a sinuous trail of spread skin a constant a(c)cord a consistent connection to the shape you've made me I tried to trace this journey as a map but found you'd folded us into song

let me perform delicate surgery sing songs of chain- saw love along your supple summer spine place the pieces of your struggling jigsaw map which match with mine... is it safe to say that I've talked you to bed for several weeks? would it be wise for me to sew your proper name into my sheets? or play your memory like a melody arranged in bits between heart- beats? well my heart's refrain repeats 'til my mouth stutters what it speaks and though the syllables get jumbled sentiments emerge complete has anyone else ever told you you're the good kind of cannot sleep?

on the subject of confidence the room grows quiet and I quite tired of not explaining myself so in case I do decide on somewhere else I leave behind little pieces each part proudly proclaiming to be (or not to be) a whole with each tiny silence filled life imitates life art takes note and to hell with the rest of it ever onward & expanding tensions mounted on the forefront and somewhere (in the very back of things) is you and forever collectively assembled distinguished but undefinable and overall not impressed dear it's always with a final thought I leave you

if the sun still shines then the moonlight's lies and good chose evil when god chose sides since then we've been repeating what the rain said spray the earth's bones into the bay let them make homes in the riverbed pool like blood where they sink back to black like spilt ink pores absorb the poison her thirsty skin drinks who thinks with one hand recitin' what the other hand's writin' another open wound to let the night in

I can't get these words right the late nights the attention turned to screens and screams and songs you'll sing forever so what's one more... we make space in the shape of lost love and I'm sorry can't hold hands with a ghost unless you try hard enough and I'm sorry oh what I'd give to make that drive again sink in your city sleep in your bed the world's not right and I'm sorry

My nerves are stretched taught across the space between us, their tendrils digging fraying fingertips desperately into our throats and praying for salvation from every swallow, every word, collapsing the delicate lungs within. you were a hint of yourself at first, a shimmer of dew-caught sun in my periphery. your name was only apparition, then, a vague, undefinable syllable in a ruined scripture, something lighter than dust - we are butterfly wings trembling in the hum behind a thunder-clap, china dolls at the knees of a tornado - We are the bowed wood of doomed windows and we are clinging, bereft, to hold the cracks at our hearts