#q4who

Confidence feels like an implosion. Everything (which moments ago seemed to comprise you)

convulses away from your skin leaving between shell & what made you

our sleeping eyes enjoy revealing the single who joins in

this soft sphere body tissue                   look:                            the veins sculpt faces.

the acid hiss of marrow says its name                      [our empathies]

        we made dark & stormies last night with the artificial starlight. A genocide of pixies, you called it. the levity of the compassionate sounds malicious. you went to his house in that morning, unprompted, unguided. You just ended up there. you wandered in the place which I have no imagination for but can only be filled by the stale sadness of framing pictures with  mangos & barbed wire. you spent five hours with him and his mother. she bought you a lavender plant and you returned your keys. you tell me this prompted after you say                         i’ve done something bad. and sit in silence or dodges or sips of rum or sidestreets of words that ask me how I’m doing

        you know the best way to keep out of fire is to get me talking.         and i gave into you. It was easy enough to hold my tongue and let back upon you when I was scared you’d lose your thoughts.          after some time speaking                           what’d you do? i ask.         and you say what i’ve just said.

        My concern for you is real.         My concern is for your grief and the months of indulgence         My concern in the way you slow down and can’t gain your commas and             end         every thought with an ellipses.         My concern is that you will never release this.

       we collapsed under a blanket on opposite ends of the couch, staring out        sibling windows, past your succulents.

        you know the best way to keep out of fire is to get me talking.         and i gave into you. It was easy enough to hold my tongue and let back upon you when I was scared you’d lose your thoughts.          after some time speaking                           what’d you do? i ask.         and you say what i’ve just said.

        My concern for you is real.         My concern is for your grief and the months of indulgence         My concern in the way you slow down and can’t gain your commas and end        every thought with an ellipses.        My concern is that you will never release this.

       we collapsed under a blanket on opposite ends of the couch, staring out sibling windows, past your succulents.

         The 5th of July feels jealous of the Fourth. The centuries of rivalry have convinced the nation that there’s true distinction between the two. In actuality, the Fourth is a parade of optimism and sulfur taken from Chinatown, six blocks over. On this Fifth? Without our dark & smoke? Everything is hazy. It scares the whole of us to see and breathe clearly.

          Gunpowder langours in the air on the Fifth morning. I blow the cat hair running over your floor doing simple yoga the next morning. Past the bedroom door, your arm drips off the bed  and rolls in waves back to the safety of a sheet and a pillow. Layers of that hair skim the wooden boards.

          Your apartment is made of teal walls and black wood archways and a single orange cat. It’s easier to breathe here.  You’ve designed it that way, haven’t you? So suffocation never passes and if it does it pains you barely. It’s charming in degrees of your name. It’s charming in degrees of your name.

you seem to be sleeping until your face blooms a foot above the floorboards at doorframe.

“I trust you like a bird trusts a bat.”                all poison & rumor

& prison vanished with him