thereās a haze of volume blurred with the build of you and I. somewhere beyond the windowsill, the frost cracking veins on tempered glass, the sunlight clementine, glaze of gold, beating breath into the earth. the world lowers its eyes, submits to the rhythm making pulse of our time, metamorphosis of caution, of guilt. fear amputates your vulnerability, the turned cheek of a wound, you let your flesh melt in the tongue of the flame, pooling wax of a candle stick. you worship the bruises while they fade tuscany yellow. I could never look away, not here, that oceanic night sky, the inky tears spilling sea.
so when my breath fuels flesh in your lungs like promise, like redwood, like shades of relief drawn out on the pavement, run the blood through water. keep me from healing.
my lips are the needle pulling the stitch, your eyes a froth of arctic grey in the teeth of midnight. youāre filling dirt again, cheek to the clay, that earthy musk tangled in your hair. I want to ask about the hangmanās knot in your spine, the choking and slow burn of embers, something hard on your breath saying, ādeath is by design.ā
did you really think you could just shake it off? the weight of a century safety-pinned to your lips, cotton candy fusing to the roof of your mouth and hoarding sweetness, pulling sleep. as if escape stretches out like an empty road ahead of you. we carry the times weāve died like the wood of a cross, clarity of burning oil.
strength is illusion, prophetic, layering weakness. the floor of your certainty swallows and caves, a trap door. you have a torch-light fear of satiation, like a realized life could never materialize, like it would mean a sun dipping beneath the horizon of wilderness, the transformation of your wounds from gash to scar. you cry out with the break, the elasticity of skin, but I see your eyes following that crimson like itās polarized and I think, āyouāll never look away.ā itās a headache of futility, treading furious water, your eyes sink away in the sapphire of twilight, the Oxford blue of midnight, blackened screen of sky.
the smoke rises, and despite our best efforts we never forget.
itās not a symptom of breath but of you. this fever that never breaks, sweating through the winter, your eyes mosaic glass and our life falls prey to cremation, the future broken off in pieces digested as your last meal. I thread the holes in the sky, and youāre looking at me, and thereās nothing in the world that is just mine anymore. if weāre burning, reddening the flesh of this world, we push further. the continuity and blinded heat floods turbulence of all we have ever known.















