breathingglassstars

and you... succubus tongue, thistle jaw, you break teeth in, lashes straight rods fanning outward, forehead drawing lines to match mine. and i... gazing, looking for the answer to whether you feel me between your lungs somewhere. i want to grow big in that warm glow you splash from your pupils but my eyes grow dim, distant, paling, bothered by shade, small, wishing for enough space inside my cavern walls, wet caves, bat-filled. the ghosts of another's fingers crest the notches of your backbone still-- she's here, even when i prove i'm here. i'm here, begging "look in me" and find exactly what you're fishing for; battered girl on til

we're back in delicate city drinking raspberry lattes like it's summer and nothing ever happened. your mother let you come outside to smell the yellow-colored roses in shop windows and reflect over the glazed smell of baking in the morning. she doesn't know i'm here. we sit on benches and chain smoke virginia slims like pastors' wives. "where've you been?" i ask you. "busy, i guess. hardly seeing anyone. but look, i'm progressing. i want you to know that." raspberry, sticky-sweet, drips down our throats. it's been forever, lifetimes almost, since you first turned on me, tried hitting me like i was the reason you were suffering. the flash o

quite mysterious, i'm suddenly driven mad by the harsh lines of your brow bone and the shelf of your collarbone. on wednesdays, i wake up over you like dead water sticky with mosquitoes on those moonless nights when we're conscious of penetrating darkness, when our whispers mix and we're forced into oblivion selected by celestial cycles. sleep. so i wander to your eyelids and let my gaze sweep like full-moon hands and fall back asleep, lifted up by the drawing of your breath.

finding sequences of afternoons where i'm fumbling around in a dark gray room trying to uncover pathways never opened in me, grown from patches of organic cells to give me home, let other people waste me away on summer sunday, 3 p.m. when nothing's happening. i try to explore cavities, opening myself up for light to burn and allow nostalgia to weep from empty wounds almost like tears or rain. and then all the pieces of me will evaporate cleanly like freckles lifted from skin after winter shows. i peel myself from cold tiles covered in daisies, i remind myself of the way bodies should work like machines in the nighttime and docil

we were girls once, following the tepid musings of the ones we sought. when sunshine slept on our eyelids in front rooms, backrooms, and kitchens, our vision was full of motion. our lives were full of brimmed one-sided warmth reflecting the smallness of our backs and our mouths and the things we saw outside our windows. we saw the streets and the dirty cars and the black tar but we didn't think of those. instead, our time dripped silent from the beams of our hair as we braided it down our backs and comforted each other with our arms tucked and folded together, piled. there they were. the boys walked on the outside, laughing flowers and kissi

darling lusts for the blossoming ruse of her stories to keep her safe through the rough-edged night crisped clean in feathers, dripping dewy from the apple of her throat. and how cleansing it must be to grow old despite the dawn's ephemeral growth, to make wrinkles out of youthful sunshine because she promised her mother to grow old before she offs herself. how daring is our darling who makes these promises like she understands her way around the circumference of seconds, thinking living's like counting sheep before she finally goes to sleep blooming red under hot water, reminding mother of her wishes in notes, in thoughts. she

a man honks, telling me to move, go, speed down long-empty roads until midnight cracks and the moon sneaks downward, a soldier. and at the party, he looks at me like my bones are made of beeswax melting in candlelight when i see him. but he constantly wishes for the east in yellow mornings when he can't speak to me-- he loses his words in a clumsy mess of syllables and drowns when called to. i call over balconies, in pale rooms licked with sunlight, out to the deserted crawl where he left me. i am not so fast as a wavelength condensed in the sea. his fingers are honeycomb weeping and undressing me like mad, like he won't ever get

forgive me, i am small everyone i know is racing on, away from me and i am standing still dug into this grounded brain like a worm until some root pulls me up again

the bottle is blue, laced with drops of flies, as i stand, holding it, wishing i were alone. there is no one here i've ever cared to know. here is tripping over flowers like the arms of those around me form a crawspace. a crawspace like in the news gets riddled with congealed blood molding grains of flesh into a mash of deadness. and standing here, pressed against all of that decay, i stumble, kicking my bare feet at dirt and weed flowers. this outdoor garden smells like pot. hell, i smell like vomit and maybe fear. i remember trying to tear myself away from a wall of flesh, being trapped within it, a fly thrashing against a bottle's sides.

a lunatic, lunatic, lunatic bird crazed as a ticking clock rounds the shields of my eyes and carelessly falls into tempo with lunges in my spine, and time after time, i feel it there, absent from sex and memory. i wish it were me. i wish i were the one that could feel the way it is to let the pieces fall where they may go and let wind rush around in my winged hair until it settles someplace new. someplace where i might have it all figured out and i will be the favorite, the talent, not the crazy loon that cries when birds hum too close. and i almost cried when you touched me places i'm afraid of because there, the birds don't