the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.

I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.

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

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

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

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

I have an axe
with hearts gashed

I myself should never have been born

Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.

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

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

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

The sin is existing.

My grandmother asked, “Does it feel like being widowed?”

Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat

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