on the taste

of maladaptive coping.

My hands are shovels

that bury time alive

in salt and sugar.

I write

epitaphs on chalkboards

with teeth better suited

to chattering

than messages

and pray

And paint for me the colors of your mind.

Confess the useless facts you still recall,

From the childhood pages you left behind.

Sing me the songs that echo in your head,

The fairy tales that held you through the night.

The gentle lines of prose you often read,

Before the morning filled the room with light.

Tell me the quiet dreams you chase alone,

The favorite hues that decorate your day.

The strangest trivia you've ever known,

The passing whims that never fade.

I long to lose myself within your tide,

To drift away where words and spirits blend.

With every secret that you choose to hide,

Cepheid

We stand beneath it,

Counting in intervals.

Some of straw colour,

Some of ash, some of gold.

Feel the delay, the pause -

How space opens

Like a diaphragm.

Light always arrives late,

Repeated from memory:

The whirl of a dancer’s steps, unreachable.

Dream-skin, fringed with visions,

Roused with someone else’s eyes.

Lie next to me, even as a trick of the light.

I would make a perfume of your quietness,

Hands water-heavy with cherry, lilac, fuchsia -

But you, the distance, I can never possess,

Your heart of strobing places.

In knowing you, I know how far away I am

From everything else.

I pilot the shape of my body between the

Bright places of your afterimage.

Intervals. Unbridgeable gaps.

Unable to touch.

Still counting.

a sovereign, fertile land

subjugated and ruled

alas, I cannot capture you

beneath the taut string

the beat of love’s wings

reticent, steady and true

alas, I cannot capture you

the eye of the needle

few dare to be drawn

and even less get through

Like quantum pairs across the void, though light-years stretch and stars depart, entanglement remains preserved between your soul and my poor heart.

The galaxies may drift apart, their ancient architectures roam, yet every force equation ends with you becoming home.

your desire

until I no longer

see myself.

Until my insanity

no longer bothers me.

Until the mad dog

inside me

gets used to

the tenderness.

Hold me until

the flames burning

me up cease to.

Swallow me whole

before I do it

and it’s almost as if I’ve dreamed so vividly about it

You are invasive,

like night-blooming jasmine.

You’ve wrapped yourself around my thoughts,

fast-growing in your tenderness,

and I feel myself letting you.

I wait for you to open,

knowing there’s something sweet inside.

Queen of the night, they say.

I would let you rule me endlessly,

intoxicated by your floral fragrance,

imagining the taste must be just as sweet.

I want to protect you

and watch you grow

the way I wish I had long ago—

to be the sunshine

you always say that I am.

I’m your warmth in the day,

and you’re my seduction in the night—

a cycle