Shallow

summer:
i want to curl up in your arms and write you love songs
and giggle over the rain you left last night
steaming on the asphalt in the hot, hot morn.

let’s go build a tree-fort – your branches are creaking and dry,
and every twig snaps beneath my feet
but i know you wouldn’t let me fall, not today,
not this week.

and at night when i feel like dancing,
i want you to take my hand and pull me into the midnight air
we’ll count the stars while you leave marks across my skin –
summer, you are hot, and breathless, and sweet, in every single way.

and you know how i feel about september, my birth month,
wary and unprepared for the agony you always leave with me when you
decide to find a southernmost lover for the while;
so we don’t talk about it, no, we just dream about tonight,
and tomorrow,
and the sunset we’ll go watch, together,
today.

a soft breath,
inhale slowly as i trace my mouth over your ribcage,
my fingers across your cheekbones,
follow me down, down, down.

this is the language i savor,
the words i know by heart,
voiced in whispers and screams.

shhhh, lover,
quiet as you push my face into the floor,
and if you should happen to hear a sound,
ignore it, for everything between us
is unspoken anyways.

a flutter of a cry,
the rasp of fingernails over pale flesh,
a sigh.

shhhh, lover.

oh,
i could speak the language of your body
until the sun burns red,
and the sky falls down,
and we both expire,
curled around each other in this
daydream
of a summer’s night.

i run my nose along the line of your collarbone
breathing in and breathing out
with the rush of your heartbeat under my cheek
nothing trembles, but nothing breaks,
all is well inside your bone cage barrier:
please don’t die.

i see him in the chest hair i rub my face into,
and it makes me weep, it makes me ache,
that you two are so different,
but every time i feel the rough pads of your fingers
you remind me of him
and i am sad, and i am hurt, and i am confused,
and i am lost.

are you my electra complex?
or am i just another lonely orphan
searching for her family in the kindness of strangers.
if you could only please fuck me,
so you remind me nothing of the
father i crave.

this loneliness settles in my veins
you know it better than most
the thick liquid seeping from under my eyes
and fingernails
and bones
retching into empty bathroom stalls
stained with love letters:
a + s forever

but darling,
we’re not even in the present, let alone the future.

i like it when you fuck me,
eighteen syllables from polite conversation
and that same bleeding echoing in your
clenched fists and tight lips
i forgot, was this supposed to be a fight?

but you bite my thighs and tell me how
sweet i taste, like summer rain on your tongue
the storms that follow in the middle of the night
or maybe the dust that settles over everything
wet and mildewing
a + s forever, baby.

our hunger makes us vulnerable to all these half-smiles
blown kisses and backward glances
and being left here
alone
again
in this bed
my veins pulsing seething black rat vomit:
all i need is a razor blade
and no one to cry wolf.

darling, leave me in the present
i’ve got no future to give.

some nights
sunday nights
i drive
past mondays and into tuesdays
where the fog sets heavy on dreams
beautiful and unrelenting
my words left behind
charity to the nonlisteners

but there’re days
some days
the bitten lips and sewn shut noises
escape tumbled out like spit
coughed unsuspecting
and infection spreads at the rate of life.

some days are
todays.