Pauper

Heavy and foreign as a lead weight
I want to hold you in my hips until the day I die
(secretly)
coat soft pink with soft metal
slick my insides with your poison
and lay out in the sun until my body melts
with you in it

How long until death graces the land again and trees bow,
cracking and white,
in his presence?

I long to shape myself elegantly, catching your heart
on a silver tray
or in the slow blink of a rose at dusk

When, last night I took in your boyish musk and decidedly gathered my clothing
I held my breath for the card-trick sense of control
and heard yours quicken with graceless abandon

(One of these days)
You will spin your silk chalice
You will stop disappointing me
and I will sit watching your translucent cocoon vibrating in ripples from the force of my anticipation

But
for now, my darling
there is nothing I can do

So I tighten my chest around the absence of religion
I clench my fists, grappling for ignorance or belief,
hoping either one will shroud you

and your helplessness.

Everything wilts

in summer's slow, hard-pressing heat.

Was it just this morning that Jake drove us down Fairview at the cusp of dawn, with the streetlights still lit, when I felt it swell up in me?
I wanted so badly to remember to write these down:

1. Life is most peculiarly beautiful even when its not particularly so. 
2. When Sean, Jake and I were attempting to stifle our howling laughter in the booth at Denny's at 5am, I felt again the warmth of youthful innocence and let it fill my stomach with its sticky syrup. 
3. The eggs were most definitely green so I did not eat them. 
4. On the way home I sought out the same sugary sweet nostalgia, but only came across the crash: You could have been there on cold faux-leather, laughing until you wept.

I thought of your eyes again, at night on the corner, black as space, equally dead,

and all the while you slept. 

?

ALL MY WORDS

ALL OF MY WORDS

HAVE GATHERED AND CHOKED ME

HAVE SPILT FROM MY GUT;

YOU POUR ME INTO YOUR FINEST CRYSTAL

BUT YOU NEVER DRINK ME UP

A bullet in the night

I don't know what to say for myself.
Words are coagulating in my throat
like day old blood and the gathering of ants
so I breath in, gulp them all down
Now,
I have grown accustomed to your coldness
and the constant flurry of hornets when I reach for the door
knowing you are on the other side
Still,
I am surprised
(In the few seconds before the curtain falls
I'll hold my gaping mouth with the grace of a thousand drunken soldiers
days after they lost the war)
There is a miner shouting Eureka in the abscesses of my comatose soul while
Something behind your cold eyes sparks and fizzles out:
Goodnight, great party.
Then you speed away,
A spy,
a bullet in the night.

It was not long ago that she did breath deeply the perceptible rush of freedom:

• sharp air surrounding mountains like a halo
• the faintest jingle of keys in a stale jail cell
• dog off-leash for the first time, 

How could she have expected you to tie her back up?

Bind skinny wrists until her bones were brittle and breaking
even before you gripped her once, tightly, and cast her into the dawn.