bête noire

carefully cupping a tremulous heart with blood feathers
caging its writhing muscle inside angular confines of pink bone
slippery pieces, thick with asphyxiation, slump against one another
and every involuntary pulse threatens outright dismemberment

firmly callused fingertips freshen indolent wounds that will never heal
because they have sprouted deep between the root of survival and my solar plexus
a low-lidded third eye stoically observes from above while viscus drips across barren hips
and it is all I can do to just breathe

haplessly peel back layers hopelessly papered to someone else's walls
salvaging star-crossed hands to prevent purple offal from colliding with silk
plucked from beneath tenuously timid toes as this chest lurches forward
and stumbles along to a whimpering score of weakly gurgling flow

(on the bright side, there is no chance of falling if you never bore full weight)

Constriction

slowly walking down the hall
faster than a cannonball...

standing forward
rushing upright
freezing cacophony
collimating light

deciding singular
generating forthright
focusing beam
shaping tonight

hushing whispers
loving slight
asking forgiveness

dysphoria despite

time is tumbling towards us

Disquiet nights and thoughtless turbulence -
disturbulence -
- it leaves me blinking into the grainy darkness.
There are three boys in my bed (twelve legs between us).
If I am careful, no one will be the wiser.
It's 3AM and "trying" to sleep is a perfect example of futility.

Yesterday afternoon I hit a wall. Expecting to stumble heavy and dormant into sleep ends with nothing but disappointment . Energy reserves caked with torpor invite only vague disinterest in going the "extra mile."

I need my clock to reset.

-- One final job interview. Did you know these things take three days? THREE DAYS.
That's three days of being "on." Being "charming." Being "engaged." Being attentive, and thoughtful, interested
(and interesting).

But how can I be interested (and interesting) when all I want in the world is to know what in the world I want?

___________________

We are so glad to have you. 
He reaches for my hand. 
Welcome back. 

Push Replay

Do you wonder what might have been?

Eight years later.
Metal band. Ruddy beard (Van Dyke). Extra tattoos to make it legit.
His face is familiar, but together we are out of context.
He thinks he still knows me.
My wicked breath in his ear,
                               I like to be bitten.

Sunrise recession, an escape back to Atlanta:
Salty with sins and the smoking gun of mouth-sized bruises across my chest, down my legs.

I think he expected some sort of love story. He wanted to sweep me off my feet.
I didn't want to be saved.
It should have ended there.
(But it didn't.)

xx

This Is How

Absentminded musings of time
leak between life and shallow pools of
unfamiliar sex and twilight cocktails.


Mingling among casual context,
chance surreptitiously takes shape
in the serpentine ribbons of heat unwinding
from citrus and chamomile and ceramic.


Inaudible whispers of pause separate the instance of
one thousand twenty nights,
and thoughts heedlessly venture forward,
slipping past well paid wardens of weakness,
to a time when the green sprinkles we bought yesterday at the grocery store
are expected to expire.

I don't think he noticed.