write me into a corner and keep me there forever

yesterday, i heard a line from one of my heartbreak vessels, it made me shudder and ache. i hurt all over, each cog that makes me love is coated in rust, why did i let doubt poison my reason? you know i’d wait, i have been, i have been. i was not ready to pour this maple into somebody else, i said i was, i just needed it. you know all my fantasies revolve around keeping you safe? i miss when you loved me and told me things. i got turned away from a dam - you drain all of the fear from me. why can’t i feel what i could give to you? did you lock your canary in a cage to check if my heart is a cole mine? did you really think that would save me from suffocating you with it? 

when the clouds of overwhelm unpick my comfort, i sit and explain. i explain to my shower tiles, ivory and stark, i watch them morph into faces and scenes and understanding. i have never said enough, i have never been enough, never funny or entertaining enough. i’ve tried but you know how much mediocrity burns my reason, nobody praises a middle, nobody gives a middle a second chance. that’s what the water sings when it taps down my back, it feels comforting but then it stings days after.

oh to be a muse…to float in and out of art as if it is mine and everybody else’s all at the same time. to be studied not for what i could be, or what i am not, but for the curve of my jaw and the tilt of my smile. to be studied is to be loved. to be learnt is to be loved. who am i to value love in this way when a muse is just a title and a title is just word? who am i to put such weight to words? who am i to pray to them? oh to be a muse…like a fairy fluttering through golden lights, like one sitting upon a tall Sacramento spruce in December. oh to be a muse, a muse made of magic.

quit writing poetry raph, you know i don’t read them. what do you mean you’re not searching the passers of the thames for a coat that i would wear? what do you mean you’re not looking for a footprint that could be mine? what do you mean you aren’t digging up the buried threads in your graveyard hoping for a silver that matches me? why do you love like a person and not a human? how do i sit and live in fantasy when all you do is live in reality? is the heart you live in the one in my chest or my head? are you sure you’re not scraping through every word looking for an authentic piece of me? how could you love me with a single glance? how is that possible?

my yearning heart stretches to freedom, the dream of it. there is a boy with a tear-stained face, one with long dark curls and the deepest, galaxy drawn eyes any soul had ever felt. his heart skipped over some of the beats, a jazz piano organ, scatting guts, gruesome exploration. he stretches his arms out like an angel, he could show you the world, he is within very small parameters. like an ant in a matchbox, he only knows the world through corners and straight lines. i do wonder who i would be if i had the words to untangle myself as a child. all i know is explanation. it lingers and weaves and stains my capillaries, eventually travelling down to my stomach and forcing a tumble of letters to eject from a warm home to a cold room. i’m making up for lost time with a string of pearls caked with blood. do you wish to wear these ornaments? a compass, hourglass or noose. which are carved within your chest? do my aches cover or reveal you? will i ever know the clarity of existence?

do you ever feel like you are a city crammed in one person? a tug to a plethora of houses tears you into fragments as you walk down the dim and tangerine avenue, a tug that sits beneath skin crying through the night for solace. is that the heat we share? solace in its home? i am searching for an evolving puzzle piece that i can fit into, yet you hold me like the sand holds the ocean, how can i look into your eyes and not stitch our future? this ceramic needle is painted with our prophecies. do you know the silver along your tongue is meant for familiarities twin? did you know your first finger is meant to rest in our infant’s palm? i want to love everything with you. that’s what i would say to you if my heart could ravel itself up in time afterwards. i am all these people with all these wants and dreams tightly woven into a frame i can’t imagine myself living in. this skeleton is my only truth. i’ll ask you to brush past these flame touched irises and hold onto how i’m imagining you, i hope you take the ticket.

how do i score my devotion on heavenly bone so the archeologists feel the weight of your heart? my knife is not made for flesh, you must believe me. this word after word is my only prayer. we stitched ourselves together and waited for the tide to take us; two skeletons with lavender as bone marrow. nothing came except the dreams dancing above our heads, the future whistling through the sky. will anybody ever know? truly? do i care? this art is my hand-picked constellation, sentences strung together by fear and love and truth - brushed over with the cold rush of living. it has become the palette for our love’s portrait, the theory lingering could be told like fables. emulsified by parallels and peace, unpicked and unthreaded to never be forgotten.