But I am no longer that much fun
and it doesn’t matter if I write poems with crayons.
The white walls of my room
with all it’s techni-color memories, and posters and glossy paper mirrors
just don’t seem like a giant coloring book anymore.

i also know that my heart
is like the questionable stickiness
of a five-year-olds palms:
no one actually knows
what its made of
or why its there
but i don’t know how
to cross the street alone yet
so just hold on to it, would you?
i must say
i’m not in love with the idea
of pumping car accidents and
burning velcro shoes.

my minesweeper mind might mend,
might make Miles mince,
might move marble moments.

my mondays meet midyear.
my mid-sentence meanings make more.

maybe makeshift morgues match memories.
maybe my malnourished members mime.

may my mouth minimize mourning:
make me matter,
make millions matter.

more manmade millenniums,
more midday movements.
more midwives, more meaning.

maybe, monogamy.
maybe,
me.

your
fingerprint
is in the
middle
of me,
sopping up
everything
like
a brand new
rag.

i am
still
sort of
foggy
and worn,
awkward
and
melting.

just
finish
already
and

rub me
off

clean.

There were lovers beneath it,
hiding the shine
under their skin
like boxed pastels.
They breathed in
only the boldest stars
and exhaled their own cloudy wishes
in each others faces
while they played
with each others lips
and tried to gauge
whether or not
this place felt enough like home.

The night looked like
broken bones
reworked into twenty-one inches
of fallen skeleton
at 9:52 pm;
A flower on Decembers finest dress.

The potholes were sleeping,
dreaming noisy street corners
among vinyl highways,
blanket-sleeper sidewalks,
and hand-painted road signs.

This city’s skull
was made of water ferries
and abandoned buildings–
it’s skin
tattooed with murals and charm.

Those lovers
wiped their feet on the skyline
and hung their hats
on the harbor.
They made fun of the dark,
the way it cowered to alleys and bedsides
and frowned at the night,
the way it felt like overlooked roadwork
and car accidents.

They reminded me of us.

There was a light on in my house.
Someone was waiting up for me
like I still lived there.

If you were here, I’d be home now.

It made you throw your head back so hard
I feared it would
break off into my hands.
That your neck would gape at me,
looking pleased and final
as it dubbed your limbs Armageddon,
its sword dull with grief
or quite possibly relief,

I could never really tell the difference, feeling like this.

like my insides are having fits just at the look of you,
like my stomach is pouting angst against feelings
that remind me so much
of never,
and your iris is the color of eyelids juggling the sky
but I can’t count the shades until nightfall fast enough
because you always look away before I do.

But it was only your mouth
that opened like a locket today.
Laying across your face, looking too easily pried
yet happily broken
hanging from the hinges because you were always quick to crack it,
showing your teeth in all their chuckling glory.
It made your lips
hum pictures of the two of us onto my forehead
when you closed them and kissed me
goodbye there.

You told me it was infeasible
for us to end before we start.
But I can’t help but feel like
we somehow skipped those introductions when
you first shook your hand with the curves of my thigh.
acquainted yourself with the skin stretching what seemed like miles
along the ridges of my back
and said hello to the nape of my neck. you kissed it
–twice,
because that’s the way its done where your from.

Let’s just be like
the glow-engraved outline of a full moon
and the sticky sky-blurred edges of the sun.
we don’t have to have a clear beginning or end
let’s just be two people trespassing in each others thoughts
occasionally,
innocent five-year-old hearts
blowing bubbles on each others property
and were just at that age
when we’re to honest not to confess it.

Baby, we are still young,
but don’t you feel like something about us
is forbidden?
Touching you feels an awful lot like playing in the street,
when the lights have already come on
and the way home is plagued with the monsters
only parents are scared of.
your bottom lip like a fruit I couldn’t help but bite into,
eyes closed, blindly trying to guess the way your hands
will navigate the long forgotten passages of my face.

Tell me this won’t end in pieces around us, Armageddon.
that God is not angry with me
for wanting to know what you sleep to
or for knowing that you taste impossible.

I wonder if He’s listening
when our hands are buckled up
and praying to the ground for our feet,
that they won’t be swept
beneath us.
I wonder if He knows that people don’t actually like
feeling like that.

Yesterday,
you left a piece of yourself with me.
You draped it around my shoulders, it was heavy
the same color as lead and uncertainty
You’re now hanging in my closet,
silent, looking complete and prophetic
so i know one day I’m going to have to give you back.
And i know you will tell me
not to be afraid,
that it is not feasible for us to end before we start
but I’m going to finish this poem, the same way it began,
just in case:
The apocalypse stood its full height in your laugh today.

And sometimes,
I find you thumbs up,
hitchhiking
around the daydreams
I keep tucked
in the naked nook of my right arm.

There is dirt on our faces
and weeping pennies in our pockets
but we are
happy?

Tell me there is something
between us.
A difference, perhaps.
That makes us,
wandering city-drenched lovers,
distinguishable
from those
who know the way.

Or that maybe
the polluted mile-markers
stabbed into the backs
of the grass that hug gravel roads
will one day
take me somewhere familiar
and that you
will be with me.

I wonder
where we’re going.

he’s old enough to speak
but his voice is jumbled into giggles
bouncing around the whites of his teeth
and squeezing into awkward screams
and high-pitched pleas.

He’s hungry.

but i can’t quite put my finger on him
before first discovering that
his pamper isn’t full
he’s not tired or scared or hurt
and I don’t know what he needs
because
he just ate.
and sometimes I can’t help but
ignore him;
this two-year-old action movie
dressed as a silent film.

i went home to see him
a few days ago.
I still can’t believe
how big he was,
playing with two years siting in his corners,
in time-out until March 13th,
parading inches and shoe sizes
because he’s not going to be as short as life is.

there were blue moons
orbiting his eyes
taking turns shining
between blinks and smiles.
his dimples–
the only punctuation preventing
the spread of his lips
from being a run-on
into the rest of his face.

He was different.

sorted out into a few neon covered
horizontal, vertical
diagonal and backwards letters
with the faintest scar
of an X over his lips,
right over his word search mouth–

“I love you,” he said.