En Ecrivant

“Interstellar”

So you see a universe in my eyes,

wax poetic on the rise and fall of my skin

that you say mirror those smooth curves of the earth.

I know from the way

your arms sit on either side of me

that I cannot collapse in on myself.

The thoughts that live and die inside me,

wild and whirling matter screaming as they burn,

are apparently too precious to waste.

You see worlds in me, yes,

and never your own reflection

despite the eons you spend looking into me

when we lay so close

that when I inhale,

you exhale,

I yearn to breathe into your ear,

beckon you

to peer just a bit closer,

find the reflection of your own eyes,

blinding as sunlight and twice as hot

like the fire I know,

I feel, rages in your lungs

chars your lips

so your kisses make me dizzy

with the smell of smoke.

From you, I know the words

sparking off my tongue

are as glaring as sunspots,

and twice as bright.

Yet  you never hear your own voice,

see it gathering stardust.

If one night

I told you

your eyes reach even farther back than mine,

into infinity,

If I claimed

to see a universe so vibrant

with the color and shine of your smile

that I cry,

“Burst”

Your breath weighs heavy on my skin,

leaving bruises that hiss

as I flex upward

against your gaze,

your eyes

fading in and out

in rhythm with the pulsing

of your chest,

slowly beating another mark into skin

constantly tinted with purples and blues.

My body is forever a spectrum

of all hues,

light to dark,

colors pooling

in the indentation

of knuckles

or the shallows of skin

beneath my fingers.

“Hunger pangs”

So in the pains racketing up my arm,

in the fluttering of my eyes,

I have to find love for myself?

I doubt it’s there,

sugar-coated sentiments

swept away with the nightly tide

because everything hurts,

but the pain tastes so sweet

I can’t push it away.

“Reel”

Fitting how the words that stumble and fall

rather than dive

from the edges of our mouths,

leave the biggest bruises when they land,

skin to skin.

Falling around fingers instead of through them,

bursting blood vessels

that can’t be stitched back together

“Shine on me”

Show some light to this life

who has scrabbled in the darkness,

~~~~~~~~~

As flower petals rust and crumble

into ground with its back

arched so tightly against the wind

that it cracks,

I spy little lights just trailing the dusk

they give off violent,

acidic kisses of peppermint

like that one distant relative

whose name I shall never know

but claims to have known me

since I was the height

of the stooped tree in the front yard

huddled in a blue blanket

but they can’t escape

because my mouth is closed for repairs

my brain shuttered

as I try to discern

why it is running so slowly

why they only nibble against

the inside of my skin

too weak to make a proper hole

amongst my congealing pores

if they don’t fall off the tip of my tongue

and shatter

at the base of my throat first

why they hiss on contact

with open and and sunlight

when all they need to do

is breathe

scratched into the air from a needle

scraping over every record with the bite of concrete meeting skin

It’s a scent as pungent as blood

being swallowed and spat up by infertile ground-

It’s unworthy of this earth,

and unworthy of my air,

but unlike the earth

I am weak

so it lingers in my pores

and in my lungs

until I’m black with rot

indistinguishable from the space around me,

stinking with the scent of spoiled voices warbling in pain under the eye of the needle

gouging through synthetics and wood into skin that, now broken

I’m still expecting my hair

to snag

on a tendril of wind

to whisk me back home

Where the sweet smell

of familiar air

will flow through my lungs

and return my skin