what you saw on the highway

i remade

After arriving in the Universe, After all the lights Had gone out, I sat on your porch And drank orange soda Out of a can And watched Airplanes go by in the dark. Little fairy lights Far far away. You were all full up with happy memories. I feel much the same now: A little warm, a bit dehydrated All the lights glittering In the nightdark.

look at you, holding close those maraschino cherries in the jar. girl, who taught you to want like this? come on, spit it out. the cherry seeds, the peach pits, the pomegranates you cracked open with your hands, all these dark stones the round, smooth things in your throat, the moon-tissue spilling from your unfurling tongue. slow and easy. that’s it. you tried your best. this is how you learn that you don’t take root the same as your sister, your mother, your aunts. this is how you heave when there’s nothing else to give.

you have never been here before and this is the only place you have ever known. this is where the islands sleep. this is where stars till their soil. this is where your mother buries her grief and where your sister buries her tears. this is where your scars stretch onto the rock face. this is where burnt things go and where shipwrecks dare not break the silence. this is where the seagulls learn to wheel without moving. this is the birthplace of the shadows in cathedrals. this is the candleflame yawning in the morning. this is the landscape tucked into the lines of your palms. this is a secret. this is where you go when the air is too bright– this is that space between your eyes and the dark. this is where the tears flow when you don’t let them past your lashes. this is the ache in your throat, girl. where the adams apple would be. this is where the grey days can see how your teeth ache and your lip curls and you do not need to make sound to scream. this is where your lost things go, but only the small things. the slip-between-your-fingers things. the things that cannot cast eclipses. this is where you are alone with yourself.

nightmelt

how did i get like this? how did you blow me open all shrapnel and seasalt or did i do this to myself? all my atoms magnetized– a compass pointing to your north? i’ll eat you whole–no, i’m lying again, love- i could never. i’d rather consume myself. yours truly, your grinning ouroboros, i’ll smelt myself into something new. this place is too familiar to you. the labyrinth is being mapped. this place will shift and stone will move of its own accord.

you again, welcome back. starbright mist-eyed you, you whom i love many lives over, five times, seven times, a hundred cycles. the universe dancing dervishes with its eyes drift shut and its mouths red and laughing– a thousand and one nights, stars and salt and sand, paperthin and rolled tight and dense with your earthblack fingers. i kiss shut these pages, pilgrim to holy ground. somewhere in our midnight in-betweens this story ignites: sweet smoke and mosaic moments. labyrinths like rose petal roads to navigate with my strings of pearls and your trails of light. the story bites its tail. we bow and we dance.