Double-Edged Tongue

I’m mad about you, longing in the face of desire, black upon the words of unknown love. But still, I need a reason to admit it, let it all fall free as the carpet is ripped out from under me. I need permission to allow myself to admit the simple fact that I love you.
I need no other love than this. The scraping of teeth together, the lies winding around the tongue, kissed back into the cupboard, and swirled down the drain with all the pregnant dreams of utopia aborted.
When did it all start to fail me? A quick kick, a brief slap, a knock forward into the future as time sighs and smiles that soft apologetic frown. It’s all a pretentious excuse of false love, and the sweet hatred of ignorant children. They try to kill, though, and down we fall, cat-fighting in the halls of hollow academics as I try to defend our relationship. They never seem to listen, though.
What they hear is what they want, and what they see is what they seem to need. I have no excuses, no desire for something more as I flip forward, until you become my defining talent and only characteristic in the classroom. Tell me I’m your child, your king, your clown, your tart in the bakery of immersion classrooms. Tell me I belong to you, that I’m not dreaming, that they haven’t knocked me senseless, upside-down, backward into the pages of the dictionary I seem to have become, your name on my lips and branded on my tongue. Nobody seems to be listening, though. 


This pale galaxy has no place, little comfort for the strange. Because I need your tongue on mine as the world whispers. I need your flesh ingrained upon the pages of my body, black ink spotting, kissing away the laughter as they all point. I need your madness, your joy, entangled, mixed, trapped in mine until I wake from this dream, sideways in the dark, and confused about what is normal, which is natural, and how I managed to make it all mine. I need you, to be normal in the extreme sense of the word.
Still, there’s apparently something wrong with your desire that I carry hidden within me, shrinking away from the bright fluorescent lights that follow us down the school hallways. I’ve never been able to reject you, though, try as I might. Try as I attempt to kill it all.
I’ve become a balance of two tongues, and the shame it carries to be in love with two languages.

Surviving the Night

I am afraid
of surviving the night
as I let the darkness
curl over the blunt edge
of my mind, midnight kisses
falling, blacklight stars
smoldering a dry burn
along my skin.
But I know the dawn
is empty, white
along the edges of the curtains,
hollow in the space where you
once were.
I pray to end
before this night is over
for I don't want to wake up
without you.