1. When I first found you, I thought to myself how interesting you must have been to have shown up in the middle of this tumultuous ocean with me, emerging from the underside of a boat near-sinking. I hoped you would teach me how to tie a knot to combat the raging sea or slit a throat without wincing; instead finding out that you had escaped a prisoner and knew nothing of the water.

2. Best viewed under moonlight, under premise, under siege.

3. I will never recover from you.

first date idleness

The curve of lips
curving, curling
folded like cloth,
a stack of linens
a swan sitting
on a dinner plate

perhaps pressed
against a mouth
to dab away red,
pressed against
a neck, pushed into
a blouse, lipstick
staining, fresh

the curve of lips

burdened

She watches him speak

Twenty is such a hollow number, barren and earthbound

imagine surrender; running in the night from blindness

falling like a tree in an empty room silently sobbing

damp soil beneath worn boots on a manufactured forest floor

the bones in his mouth  grinding profanities when he cannot sleep

in a stranger's house he still hears the fighting, voices raised, fists

where a spine should be; crumbling

the idea of place called home

She watches him speak

The same lips loved by a twelve year old girl

now quiver with the sorrows of a boy who has kept too quiet 

wishing to fasten his buckling knees- biting down

petalled mouth bleeding, skinnied and sun-burnt and cliff-edged; 

spine shot straight, eyes still

wandering like a child who has walked the earth alone

a soldier by the side of a river waiting for the forest to burn

She watches him -

he is a pool of something viscous, crawling from battle

hands over discarded rings; 

imagine surrender. 

So.

The little I know about leaving: there is always something that stays. You left long before I could say anything, long before I began to notice.

What used to offer now pulls away; you are three fields ahead of me walking hand-in-hand with what is to you a force of nature. How grateful you are for the presence of a storm, standstill amazement she walks in quiet beauty and does not slip through your fingers, does not run away. Secretly you wonder when the winds will blow her back to a time before you, or hastily push her into a time after.

Are you still afraid that she will leave you the way you leave everyone else. 

sext

he says 

let me show you how to speak
tongue lightly against 
the insides of teeth, curling 
pressing, peaking--

let me show you 
how to arch a back like a bow,  
sighing an arrow into night,

a night breathing into forests
forests burning into bones

let me show you how a man 

holds a flower with two fingers, 

takes it between his teeth, lips 

par ted --petals un furle d

he says 

let me show you how to tie an animal down
let me show you how to eat with your hands

Coerced

Just kids playing with their hands

Cover your eyes and count to ten. 

The others will find you, here --

peeking through their fingers,

splinters between branches cold in the night --

you not knowing how to say

with your lips without talking --

her.

Cover your eyes and count to ten. 

No one look, the gravy cup shot glass takes you,

you move with the grace of almost, 

with the skinny shy beat of inebriation, hesitant. 

They are still waiting, children

preying on your decision:

which tender cheek. 

Meaningless, not quite drunkenly driven

they cover their eyes, you count to ten, 
you find her and press, kiss,

wisps of hair obstructing. 

Moment quick and quiet, unannounced.
Soft rosy liquor-scented breaths. 

Afterwards, the lions creep, smiling; 

she, too, reaches for her drink; 
secrets spill from glasses and yet
the world does not move an inch,
the kiss melting ice floating in your glass.

Blind Devotion.

Hidden in afterthought -- that's all we are.