Between Notes

Slivered and incandescent
our eyes redefine
each other in darkness.
A fragile, hungry darkness
that quickens the pulse.
Your posture speaks
of predation and surrender.

You drag me forward
and I have never possessed
my body more completely
then I do now suspended
in the tether of your arms.

The weight of your smile
in descent is sufficient
to keep me in place.
I have forgotten
how to breathe
between the notes.

My words have lost their shape
and I think as I feed them to you
that more syllables would
only confuse the sentiment.
The heart knows what it knows.

I am cacophonous, drowning,
at the insistence
of a shared pulse.
I am drowning
with our lips sealed together
and our tongues touching.
I am gathering your clothes
in my fingers in the hopes
of burying myself face down
in the warmth of your skin.

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Falling Forward

All that separates us
is consciousness.

You stand before me,
an intimate silhouette
behind an opaque wall.
I stretch out my hand.
You entice me.

My words are certain,
irrevocable, a promise.
I love you
followed by your name
first and last.
There are no coincidences.

I step through the veil.
The ground on the other side
hangs at a curious angle.
A step across
time and dimension.
A step measured
not in kilometers
but in fathoms.

I never feel
quite so loved
as when I am falling
into your arms.
The way
my breath catches
lets me know that
you are there.

Our souls are
laced and heart heavy
like a corset.
Our souls are
porous on contact.
Parts of you
overflow into me
and vice versa.

Sometimes I wake
to the sound of your heart
inside my chest
and I think
what have I done
to deserve you?

Exposed

If I stood before you

mouth askance,

fingers folded

into the hem of my shirt,

gaze soft and itinerant

would you pay attention?

If I stood before you

with too much to say

would you wait for my words

to push their way past

my trembling heart?

 

I could stand here

all day drowning on air

thinking without thoughts,

feeling too many feelings,

alive but blank as paper.

I could stand here

all day with my silk wings

tied behind my back

and my hair rising and falling

on an intermittent breeze

looking more vulnerable

than I ever intended.

 

Would you let me tattoo

invisible poems on your skin

with my fingertips

in order to occupy the silence

between each breath?

I would break down

between your arms.

I would let you tuck

our smiles together

for safe-keeping.

I would gladly spend

all night rearranging

our bodies underneath

a bruised meniscus.

In the moon-heavy darkness

I would gladly undress for you.

Scraps

1

We sit side by side,

a sheet of paper between us

like a Rosetta Stone

in search of a language

that can translate

our thoughts and sentiments.

 

2

I could listen

to your hands all night,

to the patient hiss

of your pencil as you reveal

another layer of scar tissue.

Scars which were once

indigenous to my heart.

Scars which have been

passed down for generations.

Scars which I have deepened,

washed, and redressed countless times

redefined as works of art

by your sympathetic touch.

Perfect

If only I were extraordinary,
evident, a force of nature,
unlike anyone
you had ever witnessed
then you might face me
limbs askew,
heart split into a grin,
margins broadening
beneath the combined weight
of our souls in perfect alignment.
–
Did not have the chance to finish anything tonight alas!

Lucid

You are the fetish which binds
my wayward thoughts together.
I return to you again and again
as an animal driven by instinct,
as a woman who is unmistakably sensual.

At night when no one is looking
I surrender to the otherworldly,
to the dreams that we become
when the affectations
of the day have ceased to sow
their bitter seeds in us.

No one fits inside of me
the way that you do.
I want to give you something real,
my willful but willing heart,
my imperfect self,
my revolutionary tendencies.
I think that we could create
something extraordinary together,
combining our talents
and the guilty weight
of those passions which threaten
to consume us over time.

When I am alone
I reinvent the astonishment
of that first sunrise
in a way which, for all its carnality,
is a supremely gentle act.
When I am alone
spilling over a precipice
created by my own insistence
your face enters my mind
and I see in you
every color imaginable.

I love the way your mouth moves
across the metaphors of poems
your soul has not yet written.
I love the potential of hidden things.
I love how the word midnight
sounds both romantic and sinister,
and I love the idea of waking up
exactly in the middle of something
and finding that the shadows
have a substance that the day
has yet to witness.

I know that everything
your hands touch
becomes art in my eyes
and that a beauty
bestowed by love
can never be diminished.
I know that I would
gladly spend lifetimes
getting to know you
because you are the only one
who has ever made me feel lucid.

Wordle #182

How could I miss the clouds
slung across your plump, red heart
like a spider’s omophagous web?
If you intend to conquer me
then swallow me from the inside out.
Swallow me before I drown myself
between the sheets wearing only
the faint impression of your smile.

–

I gather you into my hands
and spread you into the indentations
of an incomprehensibly, blue horizon.
I think, I know, I trust that someday
we will understand each other
instinctively the way that birds
know how to fly or when to migrate.
–
Apologies for last week. Eye fatigue, headaches, and low on inspiration.

Wordle #181

We sit face to face
in a hyperthral silence
realizing each other
over and over again.

Your tongue is soft and soulful
inside my willing mouth.
I can tell that your searching
for leverage, for answers,
for a reason to surrender.

If I told you that I loved you
would you tap me on the shoulder
and erase me a decade at a time?
If I told you that I dreamed about you
would your smile spill like sunlight
over my naked, inconsequential soul?

I feel your heart scratching
at the back of my rib cage
like a featureless clock.
The steady rhythm of your pulse
drawing down the moon.

–

almost ran out of time so not very polished I’m afraid

3 Small Poems

Missing You
Every occasion
that you do not occupy
is wasted on me.

Fate
We might be closer
than the stars and we might be
fools of fate, because
night after night, I dream you
into my artless embrace.

Fathomless
We are fathomless,
you edge into my currents
supple as sunlight.
We are deeper than the seas
stacked on top of each other.

Distance

If my words were transparent
would you look through them
and find my heart beating
behind them like a moth?
I have no feathers with which to gesture
only fingers singed with an excess
of atmosphere and expectancy.

If I knew how to cross from one
constellation to the next
would I find between us
a habitable moon
or would I find only the detritus
of my own intractable percussion?
I gather my hands, my lawless grin,
my extraneous attempts at conversation
and slide back into the ether.

When I dream you are always near.