In the end, all that sleeps against your fresh
youth is an echo.
After the last words slide across instant
regret, the only thing that spends Saturday
mornings with you are the bones
of an old Review.
After tonight,
just remember the way your fingers interlocked
like you figured out a combination
of perfect timing
and lust.
Just remember, that’s all it was.
Here. I am black echo ash.
Resin. The aftermath.
Always, the beginning is fresh.
Sweet cream masked – naked
baby’s breath awakening
to the first day.
I close my eyes to find it.
Seven minutes –
heaven is just beneath
his collar.
One breath, we melt forever
bonded; a rush, a plunge,
a distance without measure.
Instigator. I break as quick
as silver, my tongue –
an anxious alligator.
He snakes back to a shadow.
Strike a fire, burn
his path to follow.
Catch on flames, catch the blue.
Beginnings start out hollow.
Torch the love, torch the pain
leave me with the echo.
so the world curves in and folds
over bottomless
alto-cumulus like
a second cloud
thundering over a handful
of broken hearts
I mean for you to find
out first
but it’s always my eyes
that watch storms
rolling in
swiftly from cracks in old
dreams angrily toward
nights that cradle infants
softly
strangling sleep that holds
and heals
I am tethered to heavy
weather on one of those old
Sunday’s watching my body
drift silently into you
I mean for you to taste these
memories trapped but my
heart is pyrite and I
saw it first.
Amaranth, on my back, off
the edge of life.
Dangling cords fall
like snakes, I hanged them
there to dry
me out. With you,
it is cold.
I can’t say that. I miss you,
but I do not. Have you
been tempted to rip her
skin off and put mine on?
My back is off
the edge, now
life is seeping through
my toes, amaranth
dangling, a love letter
for you.
Darkness is the culprit that lingers behind
each slice of sweet Nectarine.
I am late.
I’ve been here before.
The other side of love.
The place that dissects the tongues
of former lovers
and turns them into layers.
love on
anger on
love on
hate on
jealousy on
love
on poison liquid every night before we stumble to sleep
with the darkness that caresses our feet
and convinces us that we love ourselves
to much to live on the other side.
I am late.
I’ve been here before
where I could feed you Mercury
while the sun sets on us forever.
I’d caress your feet and pray to the darkness
to take you far away
from my love.
Some eyes open like black holes,
gravitationally throwing memorial stones through a moment,
letting time break a silence that lingers in every muscle,
every finger tip
for a soft crash of acknowledgment.
Other eyes move like flat lines and we must guess. Ache drips from our palms like candle wax, hot with the stench of regret
and blame.
I remember the first taste of his
time, brutal pine in November’s icy driveway. I know his eyes opened
to our flavor together,
but now he walks in such a quick
rush; as if the Earth might split without eating him up
and he talks,
like voices do
when they should,
but not one blink wrinkles,
or speaks,
or loves.
The sickness is under my skin again, crawling in confusion.
Daylight screams.
It starts with the alarm clock. Night terrors, tick-talking me to sleep.
I slit your arms around me,
But why did you leave?
Your mountains are stained by
wild midnight. You’re in love with her air.
Her skin is made of cyanide, her bones, frozen and bare.
Silence stands against my bed, my tongue on splintered wood,
I bet you’d eat my carcass, if only you could. You could!!
maggiemaeijustsaythis 