i am addicted to your
laughter, sweet and fierce and
(home); the sharp edges of your
smile that leave me aching
where they scraped my skin,
words like knives inside my throat,
oh –
i am a patchwork quilt,
cloth stitched over skin stitched over
cloth, where gouges ran so deep they were
like rivers of (lonely) in a
land full of misplaced signs and maps
written in lemon juice and braille
(i am fingerless; an amputee with ghosts
where my hands and my heart and my soul
used to be)
you drink (my tears) down like you are starved,
jesus wandering the desert for forty breaths and
forty dreams – or was it a hundred? i’ve never
been good with numbers, not even the ones
penned in red across the wrists of hollow flowers
(they slumber in attics and climb the lattice-work
of sleep to reach your room; a daisy chain of
rusty halos and broken hope – she smiles like it’s
going out of style; sinks her teeth into any grin
that passes by and hangs on for dear life –
is tied to my nightstand, and it’s just enough rope
to hang us all on)
and all the boys and girls light up like
these screams are the sweetest things
they’ve ever heard (or maybe that’s just the
ice cream, dripping down their little
hands, a kiss that’s sugar-sweet – it sizzles and pops,
but the concrete is colder than winter,
and that summer is older than the ache in my bones
that never quite seems to fade)
you ripped the dreams out of my chest, pulled the
music from my bones; tore the words out my
spine where they lay curled and sleeping, shredded
them into confetti and then packed me full;
a literary taxidermist, sewing me shut with the
eyelashes of a thousand misplaced wishes, and i
scratched at my skin until it was gone;
until all the stars in the world
couldn’t bring me
home
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