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.

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 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.

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.

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.

parodies of love stories on television
if i give you eighteen kisses can i have them back,
later, when you’ve used them all up?

take me out dancing, take me to the sky,
there’s only so much sobriety i can stand
could you please fucking learn how to fly?

if this is a dance it’s a stupid one,
you and your lame left foot,
me and my inability to stay away from those
god-damn,
swaying,
gorgeous,
hips.

so take me down from the highest shelf,
dust me off, whisper a prayer,
and knock it back,
just like any other night.

but i was the quiet one, the knowing one,
the girl who talked to that boy and understood
why, why sometimes you need to throw things
and curse, and fight, and scream,
but never, never did.

it was there, though, under the skin, biting, itching
tearing at my internal organs, boiling out
black fluid collapsing my screams into sighs
soft words, compromise, getting it, getting it,
always god-damned getting it.

lately, i’ve been hitting things,
not seeing a real reason why, why not
why shouldn’t i swing, punch things, tear off my skin,
tell the world that i am
not
fucking
getting it.

and they get it.

you can be the elephant, and i’ll be the circus
drag me through your dust and leave shit in your wake
yeah, i’m a little bit angry these days.

and it’s funny, because
i miss the feeling of your hair when you’re not around
and the stubble of your cheek,
your thoughtless half-assed glances.

or maybe i’m the bitch, swallowing dreams,
too ambitious for an artist, too apathetic for an artist
scribbling obscene words on the peace of our
sugar-coated oh-so understanding
conversations.

yes, i’m a little bit angry
that i don’t know yet how quite to scream
when every nerve inside me is rattled with energy:
did you take that from me, or did i never have it
in the first place?

“i could keep these clouds from raining!
i could perform upon the stage of this world!”

your dreams will bury you someday;
who will watch when you shatter your ankle
over an imagined ruined career.

but keep dancing, ballerina, and maybe
i’ll keep you from falling, ballerina.

if they would stay out of this warm room, all would be fine,
but they persist in haunting the edges of my nightly bed,
eyes gleaming against their own silver blades.

i would be quick to dispatch of them,
if yours were not entertaining our guests with leers and lewd gestures,
and your mouth had not the same sense of careful shame that i reciprocate.

do others find the gentleness in your cheekbones,
or do the guardians stand too still and too steady upright?

i sometimes wish we could slip out in a secret passageway,
leaving them to hunt for us through sheets and dreams,
to where there are gentle trees to comfort and conceal:
but how could we ever leave ourselves behind?

though they have black smiles and loving hands,
there is little i can do now
but spread my legs and let them in.