Find You

I have come back to you
and I am sorry it came to this
before I returned,
his name still a bruise upon my lips,
my smile weak and wavering, my fingers
stained red with shame
as the blood oozes out from under
the corners of my nails.
I have turned to you and your desire,
my body open as I spread myself wide,
heart thudding
as you turn off the ignition of the car,
lean over the console and kiss
me hard back into my seat,
the combined heat of our breath
leaving a delicate fog that spreads
across the panes of the car windows,
as I finally allow you to take me over
the edge and swallow me whole
beneath you.
I find you in the back roads,
leaning against the stop sign
of an empty four-way stop,
arms bare beneath the pale sun and boots
muddied by the rain of late November,
grinning with a promise of a secret
and a bite, something more
each and every time I come to you.
Now, as the days peel back slowly,
I find nothing else matters but this,
my body and soul unraveling, limp
and saturated with your scent,
your mark wrapped around the angles
of my skin, the kisses trailing
up under the fabric of my sleeves,
the bite of your teeth imprinted beneath the collar
of my shirt, your ownership of me hidden
from the public's eyes.
I have finally given myself to you
in hopes that you can fix me
now that he is gone.

Choice in the Matter

There’s not really much of a choice in the matter.

I’ve been drinking,
the bottle open on the left side of the desk.
I will have one, one more than I ever thought
I would when I was in high school.
Eventually I am drinking for the sugar,
not the buzz, the rush, the anger,
for I’ll get that when I start brooding,
my arms in the air as I dance,
my mind a whirl as I try to sort it all out,
lift my body open, bite back the sensations
of being lost, of being empty,
that I need someone to break me
in response to trying to heal.
But I never asked, so he never did,
and neither of us will never know,
whether it would have gone down
just as softly as vodka.
I am twenty, with less flesh on my bones
than before, and now
I am starting to finally recognize the reflection
in the mirror, jaw square, eyes blue
behind the frames of my glasses,
moles trailing down the right side of my chin,
the inside corner of my left eyebrow
that has been going white since I was fifteen,
my hair just brushing the tops of my ears
but enough to cover one end of the industrial piercing
punched through the top of my left ear.
I no longer avert my eyes, smile bitterly,
and turn my back in an attempt
to persevere through it and ignore
the scent of fear, longing, and uncertainty
that seemed to perpetually cling
to the corners of my skin
and follow me through the empty seconds of the day.
That is over now,
but I am still angry, moving forward while
looking back, for I will need more therapy than this
before I can come back to it.
I do not wish to make it back there unless
I am a visitor, a ghost of a smile in those memories,
but even that will never be enough.
I will become what I can’t see,
a riot in the streets demanding access,
the open scream across the public forum
when you attempt to shut me down,
the voice that propels them forward with their questions
as we sit at the kitchen table, homework open before us,
and when you tell me to shut up,
that I have no right to talk, that I have already been heard,
that the issue has already been addressed, solved,
is over and done with, that feminism
is knocked up, queer rights on the way down the aisle,
the two solitudes of this country already
melted together between our flags, along with the economy,
the voting rights of citizens, my national identity
and my promises of paradise
that I have been given without any confirmation
that they do indeed properly exist,
you better have the ball gag ready,
along with the restraints,
for it won’t be easy.
I will become everything and anything I must be,
everything you have denied me
when I needed it,
in spite of you, because of you, against you.
And I will give it all to them
as I watch them grow, in hopes that we
will do a fucking better job than you.

There’s not really much of a choice in the matter.
Not now.

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.

Incomplete

I am awake,
fingers clawing along the edge
of my eyes,
breath a white fog rising,
twisting against the frost
upon the glass of my window,
my heart empty,
blood pooling along
the length of my spine
as I attempt to scream.
I am wholly incomplete
without you.

In Place of You

There are these black moments,
haunted in the shadow of the night,
your fingers wrapped gently
in my hair,
your lips pressed softly
against the hollow of my neck
and the slow rise
of this clawing desperation
as I try to keep you to me.
I am already aware
that I am incapable of leaving you,
that even when the two of us
are apart there is still
the bruises from your fingers
fading slowly across my skin,
my heart a dull ache
between my ribs
as I attempt to claw myself open
to find you, extract your essence
from the marrow of my bones,
the whites of my eyes
and the scrape of my nails
along my skin.
I'll hurt myself in place of you,
at least until your return.

Whatever You Will Give Me

I will take whatever
you will give me,
the scrape of your voice
along the cold of my bones
in the morning, the shiver
of your lips against mine
as I part myself open,
your name imprinted
on my tongue.
For it is you who finds me
when no one else can,
alone between the shadow
and the soul,
mouth dirty, fingers blackened
from the heat of your heart
and my final gasp an echo
as you take me over the edge.
I have long accepted
the price of your weight
upon my soul.

Search for You

I will search for you,
my fingers clawing gently
on the underside of my ribs
as I attempt to open my body,
slice clean along the side of my lungs,
bite down till I bruise
the pink of my lips a deep purple,
staining my heart outward
with each beat and breath of my body,
measuring each second of my existence
as something alive.
I need you with me, on me,
carved deep along the marrow
in my bones, the beat
of a dull heart cupped
within my hands, blood spattered
up the length of my arms,
your name forever engraved across my body.
But this is fine,
even when nobody can see you,
as I become unravelled
at the seams, fingers digging,
nails clawing to open
the soft container of your body,
as if by this form of love
I could meld you to me.
As if I could ever find the will
to let you go.

Exactly

I know exactly what I am, even
if I can't word it, even
if I am taken by surprise
against the window of this moment...
because you gave me
these words, in the blackened form of
a lover,
a kiss smeared across the page
in the form of whatever ink was available,
the ring on my hand
and the overwhelming sensation of poetry
stamped across my tongue
in the many languages
of God.
There is no satisfaction entangled
within my arms, strewn
among the sheets and stuck
between the frosting of a kiss...
because,
I've tasted too many other colours,
drunken a different rhythm and sold
my soul to another language
in order to be free.

I couldn't even go back now
if I tried.