what is it about mist that makes me think of you

is it reminiscent of the o your mouth makes as it exhales clouds (like in the car the night we found each other again)?

or does it remind me of wilting green hills sodden with age that the fog winds its way through on damp mornings and how your eyes look like that when they look at me

either way

i think of you when it rains

i can’t write about god or art but i can piece together divine fragments of the words of others and hope that they spell out our new religion

images accumulate and abstracts swarm and puddle around my ankles… why my thoughts decided to rest there i don’t know; they are weak, but they help me stand and so i suppose they laid the foundation for my entire being

there are certain colors that when combined in any form provide a pleasing scene, but they’re all the same, they’re all trees and hills and lakes and naked bodies, but do we really need anything more?

you could kiss the landscape of my weak ankles and the spatters you left behind would be more beautiful than they could be on any other canvas

the smell of breakfast and the hum buzz of my sister’s television shows used to wake me and my eyes opened to the pink fabric of the creaking recliner and the faded print of poppies in a rusted frame

the duct tape on the back of the remote and the soft brown surface of the card table brought up to the sofa-sleeper were the most visceral of memories but the more subtle sensations like the smell of cigarettes and the blinking of the alarm clock remind me of the unfinished coloring books and words left unsaid because the relocation isn’t the only thing that fills me with trepidation of seeing you

you’ve forgotten, but i never will, the soup cans and fast food and the soap suds on my arms when i would wash my dolls in the sink, scrubbing their faces clean of the closet dust where they lingered with the melancholy of cheap forgotten toys (they’ve been passed on now to some little girl whose name you can’t pronounce)

my heart lies in the cereal cupboard and in the coils of the greying telephone that’s most likely been ripped from the walls since you left and brought your things with you (you don’t remember all the things you had to leave behind because home is a too-distant memory) and you won’t have to give your zip code for me anymore

i remember sitting on the carpet hiding wrappers in jewelry boxes and balancing checkbooks, piercing fake plastic grapes between my thumb and forefinger while my father burned his childhood and the charcoal embers fell onto the patio with the fake lava rocks and ashes from your cigarettes

i remember the frozen bread you used to keep in the freezer for the ducks and it becomes all too clear that the birds of my childhood have long since been dead

i love the threads of skin that make up your handprint and i love when they weave in careful pressing patterns of (snow? milk?) white on white

l

o

v

e

y

o

unfolding

i don’t know how to write a love poem unless the feelings come from someone else

for them i am able to sing the ballads of flat recorded recollections: blue lights and the rainy afternoons or even the smell of the car that i only rode in once (invitation only; so exclusive)

saying it can’t be defined is a cop-out because surely there are pretty enough words to sweep in a haphazard pile to capture the colors and flutters that surround tout mon corps but it’s my skin that feels the most every touch touch touch from skin to skin (verb)s my (noun) like a (vague and pencil-drawn memory) keep touching never stop

i’ve heard that when confronted with a feeling like this it feels infinite and i can attest to that for why choose words to piece together when between our eyes we can recite the alphabet in countless combinations resting only when our mouths

open

i wake up in the morning with remnants of dreams and the foreign feelings they deposit like a river leaving rock fragments worn away in my banks

the freshness of awakening recalls the warm and hopeful breath of spring, but i want to suffer through the cold, without which i cannot offer you a reprieve

the steady, calculated soul of indifference frightens me, and it frightens me more to know that it lingers in your heart

perhaps i will be able to soften it, perhaps not

i hate the wind and the yellow flickering light and i wish the air would just stand still

when you’ve developed a habit of walking away at night you can’t help but notice yellow streets and yellow teeth and your own wheezing like a broken down car, thinking you see cats twitching their tails in the glowing smog but knowing your alley rat soul is safe in the sewer sighs that curl around your legs

you are filled with thoughts of masks and gas stations and other lonely things like autumn light in the dead of winter that doesn’t feel like a winter at all

at 2am you’re at the bottom of the ocean lingering in the salty shambles of adventure and your savage toleration of sea-level, waiting to arrive home to a glass of wine, naked and burgundy and holding its breath awaiting its immaculate consumption

you fall asleep to fever dreams, stuck in the wet nest of a bald and biting moon, and hope that you won’t sleep through tomorrow

your murmured fangs against my neck rip open a void in which your words flow down my throat and with this proximity i untangle myself from myself

my love is a wolf howling splitting open and melting like the flame your hand shields to protect from the wind, a sanctuary for my bursting and echoing cry with my face thrown upwards

i think of you with the second coming of bruised toes and hope that this wild wild dance will continue

until all of my toes fall off

smoke fills the empty spaces and leaves semblances of panic and rusting resistance like a vacant medicine chest, little bottles tumbling into

the sink

caged ghosts behind a mirror and a swinging door and a little wooden knob you want to gnaw at until your teeth fall

down the drain 

where you can hear the mermaids singing

absence; restlessness; a weekend to flicker in the depths of blackness where the heat of the sun is lost in the winds and the canyons of insignificant fingertips will 

never touch the delusions of salvation you transfer between fragile, senseless hands.

xerosis lingers, for there is no pool of life that glistens or w(h)ets the attention of a stone-faced lover, the word skimming along your dry lips like so many grains of sand.

indifference staggers up to sniff the palm of your heart like a pitiful fleabitten dog,

endearing the youths whose execution still clings to the trickles of time and engulfing

the coal-kissed stars falling around

you.