torn.ado

the water came upon us, a storm with the clouds rubbing each other, frictionless screaming as we watched, voyeurs in our cars and wire cages - girls standing thin in their nightgowns at the fence, waiting for their men to come home, torn with the flying dust like yellow birds before our guns, and we aimed, maimed, sought to hurt them with our eyes in fury.

        SIREN - electronic wails assailed us with their holy voices, breaking into our minds as we stood by the windows, clutching awe to our chests in heaving gasps as outside, the landscape changed and changed, a chameleon monster i longed to pet, dragging my hands over the asphalt while the ground broke, tore open my hands and palms, and i was bleeding into you, staining cotton nighties with my adolescent abuses.

hearts drumming into me - we stood, eyes bulging with devotion; our leader spoke with the divinity of dead prophets, echoing into us, words tangling into our hearts full of summer death until we arose - renewed.

You were alive, a wireless bundle of seething needs, going down again, a lazarus of leathery skin
and empty.

empty empty.

  the empty nights i stood by the door waiting for you to breathe  (and i was so sure that
                you'd come in and take this from me, giving me empty words instead,
            walking in smelling of smoke like some gutter worn drag queen spouting love,
                                leaking through until there was nothing left but cancer
                                                            and blurry memories of desire.)

                                        but you didn't.


EXHALE - a dozen pinhole stars punched into the way i gasp
                      when you touch me. cold hands pushing against my thighs while i run a fever
                      the size of minnesota.

and like that, you threaten to overwhelm, take me outside into the suddenness of soundlessness,
  a red dawn filling the air while buildings hover upon the horizon, unsure as your frustration - you breathe and your hand breathes, and you breathe against me, and i breathe, and i FEEL.


    (the extinction came upon us gently, as we stood where we were, soft people holding hands;
i wept, and the sun came through the shutters - i was a spirit in a room full of spirits, and then we were alone, trapped in bodies and alive.)

your name melted on my lips.
we dissolved in the way he asked us to kneel, receiving grace upon our tongues
without sin, without greed.

oh how i wanted to end it then.

and run away run away (skinny wire antennae girl), coming down here with me where we peered through holes and one room windows
  like great unseeing eyes and i find you between the shutters, a dried fingerprint in the dirt - the glass blew away years ago and like a vengeance, let in light.

        whispered, 'this will destroy you'

and then i'm here, the crease in the sheets you've pulled across the bed, hiding all your griefs beneath. i want to love you, but i can't.