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.

want me

11/27/12

funny.
i am used to these feelings,
built on the axis of my heart
tipping forward every time you smile,
the itch in my hands to touch you,
run my fingers through your hair
and kiss you softly.
only now i don't know what
to do with myself.
i have been left here,
unable to run towards you
as i start to shut everything down.
i will end these feelings quickly,
for there is no hope
since you do not want them.

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.

The Fall

I will take the fall,
the crunch of my bones
as I go down,
head first, arms slack,
body open to receive
the impact.
There is no crying,
for I saw this coming
a long way off.
And I know exactly where
the blame lies.
This is no one's fault
but my own.

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.

Comes to This

Please.
I don't expect you to understand
or even recognize the signs before you,
the burst of blue trailing across the wall
after the fight,
white berries buried in the snow
packed upon the drive,
crushed beneath the screech
of the wheels,
all while the clouds of this night
peal away slowly as the dawn breaks.
Still, I'm not going to tell you.
You can guess, run your knuckles
through my hair and pull,
press your lips to mine
and beg me to tell you
when we come up for air.
I hope it never comes to this though.