185.

touching the mirror like trying to pour honey all
down my shorn hair, my shoulder freckles
like trying to tell myself
you can breathe you can breathe you can breathe
but here it is cold and it is thin and I am knees-buckled and panting

here the sky is dish rag yellow, the trees too quiet
a cruel breeze bites my ankles and I am trying
to tell myself
you are safe you are safe you are safe
trying to drown myself in all the love I can find in my fingers
while my knuckles split

no one warned me I would only ever be half-sane
and now I can't get past this cracking vision, still surprised
every time my face falls sickly slow toward the bog at my feet
never fully standing straight, never standing for long

and all I can do is try to muster every inch of gold
spun in my teeth and in my veins, try
to whip it into something drinkable
and to coax it down my throat and over my face
and to tell myself
you will survive you will survive you will survive
even on my deadest days

184.

sit in the scorch with me

the sunburned window by my bed, and kiss me

like a spray of freckles

I may sweetly sweep your lips like lilac dusk today, but

what if I fall on you tomorrow like noon with no shadows
what if I hurt your eyes

promise me

that you will swim nose-deep into a green wave with me

when I am all sleepless storms and tangles

you say and you say and you say

that you are not going anywhere

but will you go with me

up between crags and cliff shards, bloody-footed

when you see tears in my eyes, because some days

I just need the sky in my mouth

will you go with me past the tree line

into the blind forest fog when I wake from a dream

and swear I heard my silence somewhere, finally,

and I need to find it

I know we cannot make each other fine, but
maybe we can make each other

grow, like the moss of you, the brown and the velvet

that spreads down my arms, fills my skin

like the vines in my breath

the fecund heart in me that you keep inhaling

what I mean is
tell me you are here

when I am soft enough to touch and when I am on fire

and I will help you find the love you were looking for