a sleeping field

[mothpoet]

vessel

[achasma]

Circe Punishes Glaucus by Turning Scylla into a Monster (detail) by Eglon van der Neer, 1695.

[abrushofwit]

Behind puffy red eyes and welling tears Something beautiful still lurks

[mothpoet]

It's true; behind your flower petals dropping dew in the morning, I see beauty. A sleeping wolf wakes with a yawn, bearing his teeth to the sun despite the ache in his back.

[mothpoet]

love like a moth growing wings

dirty pests, driven away, yet still flocking to the humming lights of gas stations

love like the heavy-eye tired that presses down on my body

this time I will sink it into you, my pillow, my comfort

love like I don't want it to end. love like I'm not as afraid as I was with others. love like he cares.

[mothpoet]

good morning. I am drinking the pumpkin sunrise like a vodka chaser for insomnia.

[mothpoet]

I start mixing my cough medicine with orange juice, and it burns down my throat like I'm becoming an alcoholic of my own safety.

[mothpoet]

no, I don't want a title. thank you

teach me how to love outside of hospitals at 3 am, listless romance brushing past. walking down these halls feels like floating with nothing to hold onto.

don't let go, don't let me go, don't leave me here with trimmed flowers and translucent curtains. looking out but unable to see in. lay me down in the dark and cut open my eyes until I can look past this.

no bleeding

no tears

no water on paper

[mothpoet]

I may not be beautiful but I can still cough up words, 52 hertz in the ocean, snake teeth, open wound.

[mothpoet]

moth boy, like any unloved thing

I don’t know if I’m real when I’m not being touched. drunk on the molasses in your eyes, rolling off my tongue. no more haunting myself like an old house. explore my crevices, fall between the rotten wood, step into my wide open maws. when I am seventeen we’ll leave the needle down on In Rainbows and leave to never come back. the thing that glows red when you close your eyes is here; we will sit up at dusk and carry a thousand more names for that color. the crunch of leaves beneath our feet is the jump over the canyon in my backyard, down the hill, to the right, past the dried-up stream. down, down, down

[mothpoet]

I’m thinking about what it would feel like to jump on a train and perhaps never come back. Sometimes I feel like a kitchen on fire who doesn’t know it yet; the smoke smells like paper and is invisible. Sometimes I’m gone from that house, and I’m fallen curtains. And then I’m a bike. And then I’m in house again, but an empty house, where no one lives anymore. I’m always waiting for August, always sleeping in the grass, always shifting through notebooks in hopes that another version of me wrote something useful. Maybe I’ll run away. Maybe I’ll write that name on a piece of paper and burn it in the kitchen. I am holding the lighter; you can call me fox boy - I’ll burrow deep down into my heart and listen for a warm voice. It’ll sound like home and call me like a sunset.

[foxhead]

open open open open open open open open open open open open open open open

[mothpoet]

was it the way the glass bent the light that made us want to bite our tongues and press the pedal to the floor? or was it something else – the words written in fog, the fingerprints, the look of the boy on the side of the road? a solemn phantom & still in the rear view & still walking toward us in the blood red break lights. are we not every carving in the tree? is he not calling us back to where the road curves? & for a moment you can’t tell if you’re the neon or the shards, if you’re flying or still just grinding your teeth.

[mothpoet]

1-800-LOVESICK

[mothpoet]

perhaps there is comfort at the bottom of a swimming pool

I am still here, holding my breath for you.

[mothpoet]

so this is what it feels like to swallow a bullet

[mothpoet]

Nostalgia is a bitter, salty pill,

it sticks in my throat

but won't let me choke.

Memories pull me in like the sea and spit me back out again

I still hate the smell of smoke in the kitchen, windows always closed and blankets pinned as drawn curtains, despite how many times I recall pressing the ashes to my lips and offering the flames to you.

Painting the worst pasts in the most heavenly shades: soft pink deceit, lip gloss.

Soft boy, your head is a black hole lined with a ring of glitter

ignore their nebula laughter

never let your stars go

[mothpoet]

tonight my love is a muffled sigh

cold feet, warm chest

legs knit together as if we can make a knot that never breaks

tomorrow my love is a laughing brook

bubbling over the rocks you skip

pulling them under to feel the edges and soften them

I, the farmer,

sleep with my nose buried in golden wheat

you give me bruising peaches and I return them

bullet core, leather skin,

for you to eat.

palms sticky with juice, gaze lidded to the light, the look you cast to me trickles like cold water down my throat

comes back up wet and warm and clear

a slow rumble behind a closed jaw

the steady wind between your fingers

eyes open.