When I met you 
most closely 
in the folding slow blink of a rose 
in the quiet of February’s locker 
in the winter 
I heard you in every crackle of the window glass as it tightened under the weight of water 
you are not a loud person, you are soft and gentle like spoonfulls of snowfall and sugar 
you are an angel spun from under nights 
I am bright, sun-clumbsy loving through fumbling thumbs 
I am all heavy 
you are above me

Back before we loved like knife wounds we were eggs awaiting the breaking an unborn sunrise

limbs winter-thin, simply skeletons in wind, we were open, holding nothing, only prayer

and In the springtime 
you are the heat unclasping the valley from the shroud of death 
you are the perennial, the broken lock on the chest of rebirth 
you are a thousand swollen bellies, aching to burst 
you are love in the face of darkness, life dancing in the jaws of dragons

the first night I 
let myself love you 
hell’s cellar cracked behind my eyes

you were beautiful… long haired sunbeam

I could smell the burning flesh 
the gasping breaths 
of suffocated lovers

setting fires in the spider’s nest you pound on 
a twin-legged bonfire taking arms against the midnight

I do not know 
if I can commit 
to this suicide

IN THE SUMMER you are colors drunken, children running away from home, you are the sun broken open watermelon, I am chin-deep, guilty mouth,

we stay waking, days stretching out their arms 
until collapsing

I know what the hottest part of you feels like and have been nearly eaten by your warmth 
have been made slick by your embrace 
swam in the grease of your insides 
I have known your tongue and pulled from this poem it’s ink 

I am still whole 
in places 
I never thought I could be 
still me  
even though my skin 
still smells  
from where she melted into me 
I carry him 
in my hips 

I  remember 
everything  
I have lost 
the earth purges things 
like bones 
that resurface 
again 
and again 
and again 

I am standing here 
wondering 
how he looks, 
now 
with me  
still smeared 
all over him 
I can imagine 
when the sun sets  
red 
and the city fades away 
and you begins to feel earthen again 
that roses grow out  
from the places 
I rested 
on you

IN AUTUMN, with everything leaning towards it’s ending 
we miss each other from under our ribs 
we breathe like cellos 
we open our necks

how dare we destroy each other this way 
how dare we 
so ungrateful 
tear each other apart 
when we didn’t make 
any of these muscles 
none of our fingers could tie 
so divinely 
the fibers of the apexes of stars 
and wind them 
so divinely 
around the most honorable of bones 
holding us up 
No 
it is not our mouths’ power 
to diminish each other’s spirits 
shadow the suns 
blasting out our chests

stars fall 
we hit  
like flint 
somewhere on the way down

The sun itself will dip down to you

Bake your clay just to weave it’s fingers through her hair

Hotter than he is

The fire will search out ice water when he leaves her.

This will fall on your land like a lone flicker of sunshine in 3AM darkness

White light arteries in the midnight’s arm.

in the end

we were

as long as we formed the words

voweled mouths and rounded time

matched lacerations

another toughened tree ring

the ephemera of a pulsing center

honey poured in the gears of a pocketwatch

a wound in the face of the earth

the sundering of a root system

the rythym of twin chests set by a metronome

the requiem of human percussion

Eden Connelly & Brian Omni Dillon