i must be dreaming

say hello
this is my love for you
embodied as hands
a touch so gentle, ghostly
as if it never intended
to stay at all,
but that’s just me being me,
I suppose.

say hello
this is a last kiss to rotting hands
a farewell (for the last time I swear)
for all that remains here
is broken and bruised
again, I have warnings
to adhere to.

say hello
in murmurs in mouths
whispering promises
which we did keep,
but full promises still made us
one and a half; an almost
I guess we spun magic
out of once intertwined hands
only to break everything apart
at the grand finale.

this love is now a corpse my hands cannot bear to bury.

your mirage never leaves.

the wind whispers past my ears as I walk through the hospital hallways, ones with as much personality as me. the ceiling lights are flickering faintly, as though it were trying to surface from a raging sea, yet had the entire weight of the world pulling it down. you tell me to run but I can never quite hear you, not enough to decipher your words anyway. they once bloomed as brightly as those distasteful painting flowers in my ward, now everything is a wilted shade of rose and I am dragging my empty self down a broken home. these wards are filled with every memory that sits on my shoulders like a ghost, wrapping their pain around my head until I’m too sick to get out of bed. some days, I’d rather be much dead and rot my youth away. my ears are pounding with the static of silence again. you were always so in love with silence. I could never be silent. I hated silence. I’ve grown out of that though, ever since you left. the wards get darker as I go, some with shattered glass windows and taped over sockets where shock used to taunt me. we used to joke around so much, but the jokes all on me now. I’ve stopped walking by that corner in school we used to go to. my mind stays blank, playing the static of my own silence this time, over and over again. my words are as empty as the vase that sits on my table. the shouts of the love thrown around in this hospital has faded away into a gloomy buzz, a dull shade of the smoke I used to love. I don’t love anything now. I doubt I can ever love right again. it is a prison shutdown here, a ghostly skeleton of the city it used to be. there is no talk in my heart and all the hospital staff have departed for the best. the best? I’ve never been it. gravity has downed a thousand notches and I’m floating in and out of my head, willing legs that wouldn’t run. somewhere in the distance, I can hear myself screaming again in a room where my arms were bounded by bandages. the soldiers on my wrists are paled from the wars they’ve been through. they’re quiet now as well. I walk into and sit in a room where the fan whirs in a broken manner, stopping to heave with heavy breaths, but creaking as it tries to keep spinning. my mind elopes into a memory long ago where I spent days locking my heart up in trains that go nowhere as I try to find a familiar face in the sea of passengers. they all look the same, with imperceptible changes in a few places. I try to speak but my lips won’t move. I’ll only be having a conversation with myself again. I’m exiting the room and turning through the hallways again. maybe someday, I’ll find the face I’m looking for. I’ll let her light wash over me as if it would change me at all. maybe someday, I’ll bump into the ghost of you down these hallways, and I’ll be able to embrace her with serenity in my heart. I used to remember Valentine’s as the day we got back together, but I think I’ll leave that behind now. I was only loving a ghost that never wanted my company.

dreams tainted with darkness
& bleeding clouds that clutter
the sempiternal sky- but change,
could be well… a constant too)
the bedsheets are soft edged
like browning maps well-used

and so,
with the folds of our sheets
& our spare time… we reach out,
like hands with memories in between
like hurricanes with miles in between
like hellos with months in between

then we fall off ceilings and into down
as soft as your proclamation of love
the day the sun washed over us and
the sea stretched before us, so unafraid

but we are afraid.
I could hear it in your shaking arms and
you could see it in my sea-washed eyes.

love,
a stretching entity
that gets up early in the morning
only to leave (you mourning).

love,
a stretching entity
that curls up as a dancing shadow
making you only feel so hollow.

love,
a stretching entity
likewise to your ocean-deep drags
as you kiss the cigarette between
your teeth, instead of her lips.

love,
is everything we are not.
we’ll learn somehow,
just not today.

love,
stretches over the states,
and sees that we still love
despite the distance.

We used to have the world in our hands, but I guess you had better plans.

your hands are around my neck
stealing the breath from cracks
that colonize my shaking bones
and make out empty homes

I cannot help but feel so alone
at the thought of all that’s gone
my fingertips are fashioned with fiery flames
which even the ringmaster cannot tame

I keep pondering about what it means
that the circus crowd has settled in

I’ll become the love I’m seeking,
filling up the cracks with the sun’s blood
Still you, still you, still you even if I die
until the end of the world, you’ll have me
the angels are stealing earthly tears
just to fill up their lungs & get high again
wings aren’t the only things
that’ll get you all high up, are they???
she’s flinging that neck long charm again
knocking up storms under her skin
no wonder her knuckles are all bruised up
you speak tender of pain that’s not temporal
but the ethereality of your words calms
the thunder inside my lungs anyway
they’ve stopped howling in hunger
for the flick of fire & high of smoke again
but Time won’t spare me another day
I can’t let go- your heart has turned away
I have my own destiny in my hands,
once again
take me to the end of the world,
and stop with the empty words

my ribcage heaves in weakly,
like mountains had to be moved.
my bones become cold stones
shouldering the weight of guilt.
she twirls the ends of her sun bathed hair,
skin kissed in pattern by the breeze
and footsteps left behind in a staccato.
we are holding hands on a speeding train
suddenly plummeted into freezing darkness
& when the light drifts in through the windows,
she has vanished and left only a sunspot,
for me to give up missing
or end up wishing upon.

you’re going to be missing out if you keep missing what you left behind, or what left you behind.

as did Portia take a knife to her thigh,
I will take my life up into highs.
if I am going to do it for somebody,
it might as well be you.