#muse bros

I break the language into small bits,
swallow some, put the rest in the back
of a cupboard where no light can reach. 
When I speak, rain puddles and rivers
meander further south. Only the squirrels
notice. There is no one in church,
not even a lost angel. I have the hallelujahs
to myself. Some words strain behind
my teeth, some sandpaper my throat. 
They want out, so badly. I’m careful
but it only takes one slip, one hesitant pause.
In the cold winter air, words are suspended
between bulbous clouds, precious to some.
I try to reclaim them, lure them with honeyed
sighs. Thus, I am diminished, less 
of an alphabet, scurry of letters, forced
to make do with eye movements and facial
contortions. I am no longer the source,
the fountain, the encryption, the narrative.
There are gaps which means there are tears.
We’re in a sorry state.

I read once that the difference between a walk and a journey is how many trees you touched him under - and I wonder if we’re holding on so tightly to press minutes back into colors we’ve mixed to give the bruising a name. I used to think rain was the sound of the sun being extinguished, but now the steps you take away from me sound like that, too. If pain is the only way we can see something is unhealthy for us, I will write songs back into your bones; become the expanse of the ocean missing your reflection; my emotions tax this love. Goodbye is often  like trying to remember a dream by shutting your eyes and letting your fingers paint the first thing that comes to mind. You said you loved sunsets, and now I miss you every single night. I can no longer count the trees we’ve hugged under. A curtain of white has fallen on them, as if to tell me that our Shakespearean play has actually come to an end. My bones are now blue from the frost that envelopes them instead of you. I used to think snow was the sound of Heaven’s clouds falling to Earth, but now, they seem to be the clouds that Heaven throws away. If being discarded is the only way I can see my own worth, I will freeze over my oceans of emotions; become the figure skater that will dance over them with grace and beauty. Goodbye is often like trying to remember the summer’s warmth by shutting your eyes and curling into a blanket’s embrace to recreate the feeling of being in safe, soft arms. You said you loved the moon, and now I miss you every single day.

under our tree, under the long abandoned tree house– our knees on the grass above his objects we’d buried years before in the little kid hope that it’d all disappear– our foreheads touch and I actually laugh at your unruly curls that tickle my bare skin and the rippling sound is absurd, phenomenally absurd; you put your strong, ropy arms around my square shoulders and whisper “you don’t have to do that anymore.”

So you picked up all of your broken pieces and gave them to me— the stars light up the whole world as I place them on each and every part of me where I feel empty.