2. my baby brother walks in his sleep sometimes. I help him stumble into a cold shower when his eyes are wide. His fuzzy pants cling to his frail bones and I watch as he becomes aware.

3. breathe, do you taste that? the chalk of sawdust settling on your tongue, the broken promises made at dawn. I sleep in this, I bathe in this, I become this.

4. my grandmother used to brush her teeth until her gums bled. When I asked her why, she told me that she tasted him in the crevices between her molars.

9 Lines About Either Romance Or Death (rough draft) by Keaton St. James

i smiled my white-teeth-grin at the sun and really meant it. i was your dreamgirl, with my head in the oven and a mouthful of sylvia’s unfinished sentences. the air smelled like lavender.

summer sounds like drowning in the river, or kissing him under the highway with last night still on his breath. waking up every morning means that i still want to save myself- no matter how many times i’ve tried to claw my way out of my body.

…my lover & i kissed in a peach grove, & peach juice ran down our fingers.

…i didn’t know a word for sweetness that i haven’t overused, & i’m learning that this is okay, that this is good.

…poems without stanzas started  getting suffocating, & i’m just now realising that sometimes space is –

….i wrote poetry because i’m really bad with words otherwise, & that is the greatest irony i can find today.

…the greatest irony was the fact that i was alive when it was the  last thing i wanted.

…i started writing poetry again & you can thank her for this. when she kisses me, when she touches my cheeks (peach juice running down fingers), everything becomes a work of art. yes, even my poetry. yes, even my body. yes, even me.

rest stops on highways

trails by the highway just out of earshot of traffic

schools during breaks

those little beaches right next to ferry docks