Today I held a magnifying glass up to a crumb.
Unidentifiable, even magnified at 12 times its size. I
couldn’t tell what larger piece of food it had fallen
from. But there I sat, inspecting the thing until I forgot
how long I'd been sitting there.

Then I thought about the time you yanked laughter
from my lungs. It was like coughing purple and yellow
paint onto the floor. I knelt and squished the colors
between my fingers until the paint started to dry.

And in the week after that you touched me and I
melted beneath you completely. I became a pulsing
ocean you hovered over; my moon, steady, and
pulling my waves toward you. 

Yesterday you were the first thing I saw when I woke
up. Squinting at sunlight and mouth sour with sleep, I
sat up. You likened my hair to a lion’s mane and told
me you loved it just like that. 

I think you look at me through a magnifying glass. 

 

Complexities like veins,
Arteries,
Simple like maybe best friends
Doesn’t mean something
Now like then
Not so much anymore
Then like now
And still there’s blood traveling through
 Me like you.
 
Answer the phone please I need to hear
 Your voice like oxygen.

 

someday
time will have distorted your features
beyond recognition and my paintings
wont make sense like they used to—

today i see a map, a skeleton, a face.

but someday...

someday
all youll be is paint.
 

i saw a ghost last night when i was asleep. 

he walked up to me like it was nothing. didn’t talk at first. 

just side by side steps through an old empty school hallway

crooked glasses. hands ink-stained. 

it was so familiar. i was too shocked to speak. he asked what was wrong. 

i laughed. 

nothing, 
i told him. everything’s fine. 
it’s been a while since i’ve meant that. 

we turned a corner 

i opened my eyes. 

it was
just a ghost, that’s all.
 

 

silence
reaching out 
ivy vine arms
dead at the ends-
void of your sunlight,
oxygen- your voice

i could write novels
with everything you
aren't saying 
 

looking through windows lit by yellow light from dusty
bulbs inside as dinner ensues:

a table.
five chairs. 
a man. three children. a woman. or just the empty outline of one. 

the peeling wallpaper is saturated with the ghosts that accumulate in a place after a century of standing still. 

who will wake them up to dance when family has fled and rot replaces the rhythm of life inside of you?
 

it’s the heavy air
the parched grass’s thirst 
quenched 
the dog napping sprawled on a weathered deck

it’s dirt collecting on calloused bare feet
it’s slivers on your palm and pollen in your nose 

the whine of insects and the distant chuckle of farm equipment

senses melded together because,
which one is which?

i’m stuck in the lull of it. 
and i wouldn’t change a thing

i.
i wanna yank the sun down from its perch. 

ii.
a blue sky’s a blue sky but goddamn it’s so much prettier when it rains
then grey swallows me and my irises blend themselves with the world and it’s cold and my hair holds itself in ropes and i feel
clean.

iii.
it’s metallic and fresh and that smell like grass trees leaves flowers - Earth took in a big breath and sighed for the first time in a long time,
washing down roads soiled by cars like disgruntled beetles that like to grind grime into the asphalt, wiping their eyes frantically to remove any trace of cloud spit

iv.
water’s sucked down into storm drains 
white noise replacing birdsong 
and lightning illuminating life behind these panes of glass in irregular staccato pulses. 

v.
the sun is up now, 

cobweb filament shatters 
over your knuckle 
dust dissolving in a sunlight fountain 

catnap in a creaky pink 
recliner arms around 
the girl who writes you love notes 
orange glow through the 
crack between curtain and window

red light on your mouth, 
in her hair, warming posters on the walls 
holes in your blanket bunched up in the corner chapstick kiss on your forehead

what color are my eyes tonight, love?

black like the sky now

goodnight,
goodnight.