I think of you

as the memory of our love

shatters            like a ceramic plate, suddenly

I can feel the weight of your hands balancing

around my neck, I can see the fade in the colors that you left

behind.

The once divine touch of your skin

now makes me want to reconsider holiness,

the dreaded loneliness seems less like a sin and more like a virtue,

but the curfew of my heart always takes me back to you.

 

The blood

tastes bitter in my mouth,

and the color red bursts               like the pipes on a cold winter morning,

I take baths in bottled water and refuse to call the plumber.

 

Crimson-drunk,

I have sunk to the bottom of this bathtub,

where the lingering afterthought

screams              for the unspeakable,

and I can't help but to pray for a god to believe in:

for someone to make my thoughts amendable,

it's just that I keep feeling like a guest

in my own skin,

perplexed

by the perpetual sense of peacefulness,

my pruney fingertips the only proof of the passing of time,

as if to remind me

   of what's coming next.

 

I feel too much

and know so little:

it’ll come as no surprise

that I have a hard time differentiating

between your tongue and your teeth;

I am constantly pretending to be self-aware

but this performance I put on is all mouth

and no feet.

At the end of the day I do find myself

asking if there’s anything left of me to suppress:

I already learned how to walk without a backbone,

how to implode           without making a mess,

learned how to speak without making a sound, and found

how much easier it is to stay

than to go; now I am stranded here, waiting

to see how tall your shadows will grow.

 

Measure me

by the weight of my words and you will see

that the scales have always been off balance.

My ears heavy with the sound

of restrain,

like dandelions in the wind

I am only at my most valuable when I'm about to lose

control –

like waves

crashing                       on the shore,

wildly and unwillingly.

You can tear                me apart limb

from limb;

I am drowning

in your bloodstream,

I am

sorry: I never learned how to swim.