i count breaths, every one
between the me you know
and the bleeding tree
sometimes the numbers are so few.

bodies that don't hold up and
perfect girls flying off of buildings
just to say hello to the ground
these things are all i see
until my chest tightens
and choking on blood
i try to extract you.

i won't wait, so you'd better move fast

i feel vaguely like my nose is going to fall off of my face, yet another herald that autumn is here.
it's a worthwhile sacrifice, this being able to breathe, and besides, allergies make one look cute and vulnerable, and nice girls will get you tissues, if nice and pragmatic is really what does it for you. since i never remember to carry my own tissues, pragmatists are sometimes handy to have around.

i love the demanding chill of the air, running past with its tangible secrets. i love the changing leaves, precursors to personal transformations. is it really almost samhain again? perhaps i'll think of going with tracy this year, since i apparently do nothing but trouble when i go out on my own.

there are miles of that town bathed in one night of my blood, that cursed rainy night and the bloodied footprints as the rain hit feet, hit concrete, and swept up that part of me, to be mingled in with a million other sounds and lives and moments.

sometimes that night haunts me, and i wonder why i did what i did. but asking questions like that is simply silly, when you stop to consider that wedged in between the alpha and omega really simply lies no choice, nothing that can possibly be done except to manipulate the letters we are given to tell the same story over and over and over again until we get it right.

a year ago was work and lots of play. bubble teas and meandering nights with jill, walking and just conversing about what became not really anything at all.

i walked through a hurricane
to bring you carefully wrapped peace
roses, wilted, so you would know they were mine.

mud caked onto my shoes and made me infinitely taller;
by the time i reached you i was a giant among men and yet
my footing was shaky, unsteady
and part of me climbed down down down into the deep dark
to rest with you a while.

as they closed off the sky i found
infinite corridors that each went on forever
with tired feet and heart of stone i sat
immobile
staring off into eternity,
mine or yours or no one's at all
perhaps just a corner where our worlds overlap.

to see starlight again, i would give most anything,
for the slightest chance for one last wish
(i would wish you up up up and back
where cicadas sing and each singular
firefly is a flash that sends you home)

here it is cold, metal, must and fear
panic decayed into molecules
of earth, splintered wood, and fingers
ever reaching,
snagged on roots and tangled in rapunzel hair,
reaching, ever reaching
into the blackness where we knew the sky to be.

every room has a skeleton, and a closet to keep it in, and you're mine

i sometimes forget that hearts are fragile things.
this, of course, is really just to say that i'm reevaluating my options.

it's not really a matter of figuring out what i want to do, because truthfully i want to do everything, and therefore don't really want to do anything, because doing one thing means that there's another 500 that i could be doing in its stead that i'm now missing out on. it's not that i've ever really disliked anything that i've done... i just didn't like not being able to do everything else.

but i think that i've made up my mind to apply for graduate school in the spring. here in tyler.
yes, the violent succubus of cities, and i'd sign on for some extra time here, and the strange thing is that i'm really not even doing it for a girl (which is what i would expect of me, honestly).

so i'm looking for a second job right now, so that i can pay all the money that i need to pay to have all of my school paperwork in my hands and ready to roll come february 1st, which is my deadline for admissions. maybe i'll take a vacation this summer, maybe next. maybe i'll calm down and abduct my true love and climb to the highest point in Scotland and everything will be roses. but that's all an awful lot of speculation when i still have no idea whether it's something i would even want to do, since i have no idea of what else i could be doing instead.

it's like ani said, "i wonder if everything i do, i do instead of something i'd like to do more... the question fills my head."

when i wasn't too busy being lonely, i'd stare over his shoulder at a map of the world

rage.
of the perpetual variety.
it subsided when the rain came, in that sweeping "maybe it will wash this all away" variety.
but my heart lurched when the clouds parted; it seemed that the least the heavens could do is feel the same way i do, and it is in fact always raining within my mind.

but enough patty griffin and i start to calm down, enough, even, that i can start to focus, which i haven't been able to do for a while (though this is clearly because i'm stupid, and not because, say, because my dyslexia gets worse when i'm stressed or because i stopped taking my anti-anxiety meds shortly before i started freaking out all the time, because i got crap for taking them). i calmed enough, even, that i could add an entry to my newly-begun list of things that make me happy.

i can't wait to get into my car and drive somewhere-- anywhere. maybe just to assert that i'm not stuck here, or to have some time and space that's just mine, some place unadulterated, without idiotic memories attached to it. i just need enough distance to aver that there does exist a space and time wherein i'm no longer... any of the jumble of emotions that i am... and then i can come back and function like a normal person and pretend that i don't feel like i'm selling out. or maybe i wouldn't feel that way any more, if i could get away from this for a while. times like this, i'm so effin' happy i don't have a cell phone. i forgot how nice it could feel to be unreachable.

someone somewhere has unglued our epoxy

i woke up unwilling to embrace the cold
which is really just to say
it's your fault i missed the bus this morning
stumbled through foreign city streets
where it would have rained if it were more poetic.

and i promise you that i will be brave

i could split apart my father's love for my mother
and show you all of my secrets
(because this is where i hide all things plainly)
but frankly i have no codex to predict
how you would react to the stark redness of my life
and i would sooner you wrap your hand around my heart
than try to patch the wound, even as it gapes.

here is the violent contrast, the sudden realization
you are less contamination and more evolution
the path my atoms were meant to take
breaking down and merging in perpetual osmosis
until even in madness i do not attempt to extract you.

the truth is that i would happily be your loyal subject
always for you, i was afraid of being of you
spurting equations and manically calculating
which pieces of me would remain
should this chemical reaction reverse itself.
i feared that your atoms in me were the only ones
that remembered how to breathe,
and i had gone too long in your presense
unaware that i was holding my breath.

flush my worries down the drain, fly away to somewhere new

i thought that if i emptied my wrist into your pasta, it meant you would have to love me forever.
maybe it did, and maybe you will.
but i was afraidafraidafraid of your atoms taking over mine until every cell was touched, yours.
i tried to tell you this but said it in passing, like i do most things of import.
i danced in rain and smeared forever across my heart
never scared in practice, i grew terrified in theory
but i knew that nothing else would do.

been up for 38 hours and it don't look like sleep's coming soon

i dreamt of my lips on your inner thigh
and awoke hungry for you
knowing you are the only sustenance i need
early morning woke to find me
suffocating upon your flesh
my mouth pressed to you unrelenting
my ritual communion
forever making you part of me.

moments later i could feel your breaths
ragged as mine have ever been
heaving me towards abandoned hope
etching your mark inside me once more
and i buried myself in you
surrendered in screams and exultations
my painful confessions and repentance
and i was yours once more.

none but you shall touch this temple
you have made of my body
like an eager god i await your prayers
rain blessings, cover you
and like a slave i will beseech you
in anxious cries and reticent touch
to have me always in your mercy
carry me always in your thoughts.

i watched you laugh almost inactive
remembered you clothed in boiling light
i clutched desperately to my silent morning
while still in slumber, we entwined
each blinking a new capitulation
to the fire lodged in your fingertips
every counted breath extracting you
from those places only you can go.

i dreamed desperately to keep silent
and prayed i could consistently conceal
the way my mind placed my mouth to yours
and your dulcet tones became whispers
hushed and longing and hopeful
i could feel your body move beneath mine
and how, as afternoon sun began to fade,
my hungry lips rested on your inner thigh.