Tear in my side...I feel it all.

vertigo

instinct to brace for the fall, ungracefully spilled like watercolor over the hardest canvas. to summon black touch— blue lips and eye glaze. hip bend over flattened cushions, slow waves as a hush falls, like distant church bells from a town you've long abandoned. watch for table corners and your weakened will. ice melt and sundown as silent companions.

monstrous

swallowed rainwater under this vacuous evening— streetlights burn out one by one, leave a frame obscured, anonymous, power lines keep no trace of the vanquished, the held breath of a tornado watch, to share a basement with dead spiders and lint, space for hungry flood, the same song on repeat as comfort, as vulnerable limbs stiffen in the summer's tar pit hunger— the resignation of the loss of the hope for the spectacular.

deadheading

sun drained color removed with rust dusted shears— faded beauty to mingle in a purple bucket, memory lodged in gray matter, gentle surf and your bronzed curves in the afternoon ocean view, a picture frame in an attic, upside down and laid to rest in the ash of a fire ravaged union, wildfire smoke haze over the bland stalks that gently sway in solitude, a requiem in liminal state.

crop damage

earthworm veins gasp, pant in the nutrient devoid carpet of this invasive stranglehold. all points are a scream of nerves, of wounds camouflaged under the barriers of heat, of woven tales that exist to distract from the morning fog dragged onto a porch, onto the crooked birdbath in a dead flower garden. last light squints, vacates like happiness. safer to remain untouched. easier to be tilled and left to mingle among the stiffened corpses of ladybugs and bumblebees.

disenfranchised

a nightlight, a flickering in storm season, a burned out bulb and faith's low dirge over your ever present sadness, a mirror swallows your dissolving outline— no one bids on the shadow in the window, a chair left empty, there is no space left for you to twist brittle bones, knots permanently bound, severed from a perch never meant to hold you— a disenfranchised life.

underneath the bark

the fresh start, a ringless smooth cloistered from sharpened axes. such a pliable mouth to engage— secret swaddling before the angry sound of backhoes, the spine snap in dead calm. stasis becomes a form of survival, muted sky blasts and a burrow into pulp. escapism towards elusive dreamscape.

fallow seasons

a faked death, this dormant, shallow breath under tree bark, in the tangle of roots and grubs. something lies in hibernation, extended coma to preserve the last shreds of pinked organs. a winter state in the fallout, blue and green in a capsule, your scorched soil weariness. harvest hides from your achy fingers, dried riverbeds and a sandpaper tongue in this arid topography.

you remember every shipwreck

each time a body of water claims a piece of your leaking vessel— caught under cumulonimbus, the months swallow the pigment of your skin. you remember the smell of distressed wood, the spiral into fish bone littered sand, the familiar churn of acid in a rust lined kettle of a stomach. when will you let the itch to leave remain unscratched? these waters will wait for you to stop wading, will grab your swollen feet and pull you into the undertow.