My soul is a cadaver
Black and blue from
So many aching chills
And tree branches
Knocking, etching
Into the glass panels
Of my window
Frosted over with
Handprints seeking
The warmth of meeting.
They are lonely as I,
Grabbing at my own heart—
Half rotten, full of nothing.
The rose-laced curtains filter the storm.
Lightning flashes, beaming through the flower petals.
I lay with you here, on this uncomfortable mattress.
Beneath the popcorn ceiling
We remain prisoners to the billowing gray sky.
Even though the springs dig into my hips
And jab at my ribs, I cease to feel anything
But the spark of your lips on mine—
On my skin, prickled with tiny mountains
Crafted by the graze of your fingertips.
The night will come and this storm will pass,
But for now, keep me close to your chest,
To the thunder beat rhythm of your heart.
Jupiter is in the south of the sky
And I love you like the hurricanes
Warping some place
Much too far to reach.
You are gone—
The roses on my desk
Are wilting, they are folding in
On themselves.
I know eventually they will become
The roses in the trashcan
I have written of before
But I am unsure of the moment
I can bring myself to be that person
Who can let go,
Because I remember when—
You will kiss me on the high arc
Of the causeway.
You will kiss me in the back seat
Of your father’s station wagon—
The headlights separating each drop of
The rain pouring down from the sky.
You will kiss me in my dress,
Behind the church
For the first time.
I am sorry for my heart
And its stubborn affection,
But I feel you here—
Your smile against my teeth
That night we watched B movies together.
It is storming.
Lightning cracked the oak tree
In my front yard.
I am walking, I sometimes walk in the storms
And somewhere, in the bottom of the rain,
I want you,
I want you now
As my lungs sigh with the heave of the wind.
I am in the woods
And I am trying to put you in the woods
With me.
I am trying to put you anywhere
With me.
I try to place you here
Kissing me—I am kissing
The frost clinging to the window
When I kiss you.
It is hard to cry now—
You are with me
Writing notes in the condensation
Of our glasses of sweet tea
On the porch railing at sunset.
You are with me
When I fall and stay there,
You touched my skin and
Stayed with me.
You kiss me on the ground,
In the drained Lake Marty at night.
In December there will be snow
And it will be warm in your arms,
In the angel you pushed me through.
I have room inside of me,
Inside of my chest
For you,
Put your dead things there,
In me—I will keep you safe.
It is hard to cry now,
Even with you dead
In the back of your room.
You are dead in the back
Of my mind.
You are dead in my heart—
Sit in a chamber of my heart,
Press your gun into me.
I miss you.
Another night pulls me under,
Into the shadows of my thoughts
That haunt me beneath the sheets.
A heavy emptiness echoes the pain,
The inability to find my way home.
A million stars assemble, shedding
Light upon a million shattered dreams.
Tonight I will take the hand reaching out
In the night, hoping to feed the darkness
Quiver in the light of day.
I want to sink,
I want to drown
In the darkest
Parts of you.
I want to plunge into
The the hell pits
Of your sorrow
Only to return
To the surface,
Mending the break
In your tide.
I want to feel you—
Your heart beating
Heavily within my own;
Your thoughts twisting
Endlessly into my dreams.
I want to feel you
Within me, surrounding me,
Engulfing me wholeheartedly.
(There is nothing left,
But empty hands
And burnt up hearts—
This is a hell I have seen,
Searing into me once again.)
Take me away
To a place where
You are all I can see—
I want to love you
More than I love me.
Perhaps then this
“Stone cold” heart of mine
Will melt and run
Through your fingers
As my guard
Comes falling down.
The gray rushes, filling the tide
With remnants of grand castles
And ephemeral footprints
Left to wither in the sand.
The waves throw themselves
Toward the shore, breaking
In time with my heart—
Thrusting sorely against my chest,
Filling its chambers with
A bitter emptiness,
Dense enough to slow it down
For a moment, giving its all
To the ocean, shattering,
Gleaming against the starlight,
Hoping to catch the moon.
Drenched in the abysmal light of the moon,
Pulling on the tide of their tears,
It is the Willows who cry out into the night.
All they know is sorrow, and the pain
That comes with watching the flowers beneath them
Wilt and shrivel into fragile brown wretches
Of spring’s quick dismissal.
The sun returns with her warmth
That will scorch and burn.
She will harvest the last flickers of colored life.
The flowers die— as all things eventually do—
And sink beneath the soil, lingering
Until Earth dies with them—
Another life waiting for death to return again.
My heart beats
Differently today.
Its pace, quickened,
Racing to keep up
With the shadow-bursts
Of doubt—lingering,
Looming along the edges
Of fingertips too close to skin,
Hardly touching, igniting—
Setting fire to eyes
Weighted down,
Chained and hung
In the catacombs
Of uncertainty.
