We were sublime in being our individual selves, perfect in our own separate bodies. I imitated me being me being me so well that even my hair follicles couldn’t tell the difference. I tied the loose ends back with scraps of yarn, torn patches of my atomic matter that had strayed in the confusion.

the tap-tap-tapping
a fingernail on porcelain tiles
swirling in accusation
spit of toothpaste in the sink

I love this loveless inhabitant; admire those scarred palms; live for the fall of hair over open eyes. These novels we write; the papers on which we scrawl everything but ‘I-love-you’s, fodder for the fire; the philosophies of nothing. I knew that I would wait forever, though you are an actor and not a religious figure. Society screams the two are one in the same, but we few cynics can see through the gold and false prophecies. Is this wrong? Is this terrible? Is this fraud? No matter; take pleasure in knowing that you cannot shame me in the spotlight.

You radiate the evening and cigarette smoke and it’s another moment where I should feel crude and tawdry but there is only desire, and just once I wanted to find there was something more than death. Twenty-three words said to me, whispered ideas that reverberated somewhere in my ribcage [malnourished, and were thus forgotten]:

One:
a frog splayed in sanitary fluids, debased, cold and ready, organs on display; you and that plastic scalpel more intimate than any kind of sex


Six:
wherein you cried a river
and I dutifully swam in it
the future, purple,
brimmed with tears


Nine:
the heart palpitates underneath layers and layers and layers of paint, disinfected tissue, second-degree burns


Thirteen:
breathe in, out – repeat, remind yourself that she will never love you. You hopeless animal, you blind dog, it doesn’t matter what color eyeshadow, it doesn’t how long you hide yourself in the mirror


Seventeen:
drown (as a verb): deaden one's awareness of; blot out: (see: people who drowned their troubles in drink.)
drown (as an action of devotion): submerge one’s self in another’s entity: (see: people who are in love.)


Twenty:
there’s a clearing by the creek where children play during springtime -- bees drone; danger is a barb through the heart. The grass and spirits are uncut and wild throughout the town as we race down the earthen trails backwards. Woven thread of Many Sad Colors intertwine, like sinew, like organs, as you and I, Siamese twins, go: up and over, up and over, again, again, those eyes, how they spin…