littleblueraccoon

was it worth it when you laid on the floor massaging muscles worked like taffy when your eyes melted static down your cheeks over your tired hands how I slept on the couch while the tv muffled stories of 15-year-olds getting shot stealing milk cartons from the corner store was it worth it when we emptied our wallets of sticky bills pried from tables the endless chatter of a dinner rush that background music emptied our wallets of all the nights that spun into mornings as we quietly broke our spines to build our own liferaft was it worth it when I rode the bus home crying in the dark showered the grease from my flesh and saw shattered glass

Your hands introduce soft longing to the raspberries, soothing the brambles that hiss as they climb unsteady ankles; you carefully cut around where the fruit has rotted. Texture teaches your tongue and sweetness rains in a race toward your chin. True catharsis sweeps across gentle eyelids, exhaustion or security. I drip from the ceiling, liquid soul, like a spirit settling into your bones. You graze your fingers to my lips and let me taste.

when, exactly, did you start undressing me with your eyes?

would it be terribly insensitive for me to say “good morning” in a cemetery? the sun lifts up slowly, and the dead sleep in late, as usual.

imagine trees of tangerines, heavy sagging suns on all the branches. rip one down, introduce it to vivisection (though dead or alive, it never cries out), and squeeze until pulp like entrails forces itself between your dripping fingers. stare blankly at the mess and attempt to clean it, succeed only in staining your clothes golden. work the designs against your skin until the mistakes become tattoos and the rinds before you look less like refuse and more like fresh-hatched eggshells. as the morning scent stings your senses, reach up. don't look, just touch, and rip down another. and another. and another.

Your family tree simply grew this way. Your mother’s tongue cut throats as well as stone walls, but it never reached your skin. You considered this a blessing, failing to account for the million praises you never heard. Since the moment you were born, she struggled to separate your face from her morning coffee. She lived in a slow blur and you were an alert inconvenience. Nearly every morning she faded through the kitchen and living room, reciting old sorrows to herself while you wondered what you had done to confuse her. Sometimes she remembered to kiss you goodnight. Other times she pretended you didn’t exist when you cried fo

some poems feel like water. this one is more like sand, and I'm suffocating in the maw of a desert that was better left rusting its clairvoyance. it started one night when I remembered that I've kept everything you've ever given me: roses, faces, promises. I never really understood how to let things go, and when the thought of turning the things you'd touched away from my doorstep choked the poetry from my throat, I realized why. I keep reminding myself that I should probably be nicer to you, but I think you already know that I'm only capable of being nice when I'm cornered and out of ideas. and despite what you claim, you've never been

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He's smoking again. I am forced to remind myself that I shouldn't give a damn. I resolutely pretend I don't notice, even as his cigarette expels long silvery-grey strands into the frigid January air. He hasn't seen me yet. The distance between us yawns forward, a wordless expanse. It could be a heartbeat away or an entire ocean, but it is neither, just a slushy street corner in a quiet town. It's the place I grew up, a little community where the only thing to do is drugs and nobody has ambition beyond tonight's rest. I used to think it was beautiful. The gratified park benches told me stories; the Sharpie on the bridges let me know of ever

your body is candlelight and I keep brushing my fingers to the flame, daring it to bite back.