I have nothing to hide.
I have nothing to be ashamed of.
A vision is not a body.
A body is not intimacy.
I have learned to not be afraid of being seen.
How to be unapologetically present.
How to paint my fingernails with poison for when
all I can do is claw at the eyes that try to devour me.
Teach me how to love
without leaving claw marks.
Those blessed crescent moons of longing
I left across his chest
like tire tracks.
And I pretended I was the one hurting
while I followed the trail of blood
he left
all the way to the airport.
All the way across the sky and ocean.
And it took that bold red streak across the clouds
like god was an angry painter
before I heard what he had been trying to tell me.
“You love too violently.
You love like expansion in a beaker.
Volatile. Not celestial.
Believe you have moons on the tips of your fingers all you want
but you cannot ignore that the tide does not turn
at your wish.”
And I looked up at the sky
with arms full of broken glass
and god painted
and painted
and painted.
I hid in a bus stop while the sky screamed your name. I wonder if the homeless man next to me heard it too. The rain on the linoleum roof made it sound like the world was ending. It made my lungs forget I needed air.
They say that it takes 27 days to form a habit. Well, I was on day 26 of not thinking about you. Not thinking about how you smelt like cucumbers and green tea. Not thinking about how light your eyes were. Not thinking about how cold your hands became after the sun set. Not thinking about how it felt to fall asleep with your breath on my neck.
I’ve been on day 26 many times now. Even though recollection is a daunting task when the scraps have been scattered from the the South China Sea to the Fourth Quarter, I can’t leave them to be buried by sand and coral. If the earth cracked open and threatened to swallow those months, I would reach into it’s molten heart to rescue them. If the cosmos stole those memories from me, I’d walk the milky way till I turned to stardust to recover them.
Because we are pattern recognising creatures and the only pattern I need to see is that when I’m with you, everything becomes beautiful.
Our words danced as one.
I thought we’d write forever.
She’ll never see this.
Poems on our tongues,
exchanged only through passion.
Her words in my throat.
Entwined like tree roots
her cold breath kept me alive.
Lips on lips on lips.
Dependent on her,
I forget what air tastes like.
Resuscitate me.
-
Holding hands is not
enough when she has no qualms
hacking her arm off.
I tried to keep her
away from razor cutters.
Her pills laughed at me.
She slept with a knife
under her pillow. It was
her one companion.
There was no space in
her bed for a girl who said
“I love you” too much.
-
Spring would cower at
her beauty. If only she
still knew how to smile.
She’s my galaxy,
with eyes like constellations.
Such wondrous beauty.
God paid extra close
attention when he sculpted
her out of marble.
Lasers, not chisels
for the precision of each
breast, hip, and eyelash.
-
Her mane, untamed by
combs, crowns her Queen of my pride.
My prowling goddess.
She was my princess.
But a humble servant girl
deserves no diadem.
I would turn myself
to dust and soil, trying to
grow you a garden.
Dear drugged up angel,
sorry my arms were too weak.
You fell from such height.
-
My Persian flower,
haikus of five-seven-five
simply will not do.
Run your teeth up the center of my body.
Womb,
stomach,
ribcage,
throat.
Push your thumbs into me,
crack me open
and I will glisten for you.
Watch me spill onto your shirt.
Canines ripping flesh,
molars grinding.
Indulge.
Devour me
all sticky hands
and stained tongue.
Let me drip down your chin-
a trail of forbidden nectar,
all messiness
and savouring.
Wipe me off
with the back of your hand.
Or watch me fall to your chest
like the last drop to overflowing
madnesses.
If we must not eat of the tree,
why are its fruit is always ripe
for the picking?
I want to tell him:
I will love anyone who has loved you.I will love anyone who has been soft with your thorns.
When they lift their shirts
and show me their punctured sides,
I will love them
and I will love them
and I will love them.
Because they have been kind to you.
Because they held you with tenderness
even though it hurt.
Loving him was like
slow dancing on a frozen
lake at the edge of winter.
“Come for me,” he said
So I flew across two oceans to crawl into his bed
of freshly snowed powder mouth crying:
“Let me love you!
Let me love you.
You don’t have to love me back.”
You don’t have to accept it
but allow me to
and I will leave every part of myself at your doorstep,
out in the snow,
out in the rain.
I will wilt on your porch like a discarded bouquet.
I will fold on your stoop with all the brokenness of an unwanted love letter
and I will do so with all the happiness of a man who has everything
because I want for naught to be able to be close to you.
I want for naught but the chance to return this wandering soul to its rightful home.
Think me desperate.
Think me insane.
But all is not lost
if all has been given.
I held you with a reverence that made my arms tremble
so violently my teeth cracked like earth faults
and I couldn’t even tell you how unworthy I was.
Have you ever watched a snowflake melt on a car window?
It looks a lot like surrendering.
I fell in love with a boy named Lucky.
He only wore black
and his eyes were the same colour as his hair,
a molten brown so warm you had to watch out for embers.
He stirred his scotch with icicles
and said -1 was the perfect temperature
but he had the warmest hands I’d ever held.
He spent his life chasing winter.
He moved to a new country every six months and said
he didn’t have many friends
but I’d hear
“Are you alright? Do you need anything?”
slip from his lips every ten minutes.
He told me he was born in the snow and I couldn’t help but imagine
an asteroid crashing into the ocean.
This boy glowed like freshly forged steel
and I melted once I saw him.
His fingers like incense
blistered me wherever he touched.
I wanted to ask if anyone was praying for him.
I wanted to ask if he lived a life of perpetual frost because -30 winds were all that could cool him down.
He had fireworks on his tongue
and I listened to the symphony of the snap crackle and pop
as he set me kaleidoscopic
from the bottom up.
He made me feel everything I thought I had forgotten how to feel.
He gave me everything that was taken from me.
His arms were like olive branches from my past
saying
“Here.
Here is all you have lost.
Here it is in abundance.”