Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

I myself should never have been born

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

The sin is existing.

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote

We stop doing dishes while
a mile unwinds
from the tree outside.

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house