Running through a field of flowers
during a lightning storm; not giving a fuck
if I get electrocuted—maybe I’ll electrocute back.

October—a birth and a death; nostalgia has
her fingers creeping along my throat,
a brush with a tiny bit of death.

And I want to self-destruct—at night, I can’t
see his face, and the memories shuffle—chaotic.
I cannot recall; I cannot touch them with my brain.

Posted on fictionaut.com

She sews herself
into a tiny room.
She melts, ignoring
her hunger.

Determined, she wants
change, to be like heaven,
to reshape her body
in flight and be free
from dirtying herself
by crawling again.

She is wispy and worn,
strangling me with smoke
from down inside her

I see her, briefly touch
her lips, and she explodes
inside my stomach,
birthing a thousand
butterflies with fiery wings

for Vitali

I did not know you well enough to write about your death,
how they found you dressed in black, sleek in your scuba suit
in the Florida fall, drifting like the plankton do

This ribcage holds panic
surrounding the ghost of a man
still alive outside my body

I want to claw his back bloody
while I kiss his throat, bite his tongue
have him bathing in both our sweat

I stop myself, I need sleep
I need him but I want him too
our hands meet but miss

build me up like a funeral pyre,
burn the skeletons
brighten the night
until the sun rises again
and I am gone

in a tiny rainstorm
in a dark room, midnight,
we dance around each other,
two touching phantoms

a little bit of salt,
the slightest of weight

There is no God
but the darkness of him
crashing into me

I live to smear dirt
from my filthy face

onto his cheek,
down his chest.

Rain is dripping,
slipping onto my thighs,

where I’ll baptize him
everywhere on his skin,
slow but all at once.

I suck my fingernails
where an ex-lover left
his wet skin.

It’s after midnight,
I taste him.

I think of him holding
my hands down,
staring into my eyes
as if he were watching
the sky exploding.

His eyes bloomed, his
hands tightened around
mine, pushing them
up above my head.

Quiet animals in
a dark room, silencing
each other with tongues
slipping past sighing lips

On the 11th anniversary of my mother’s death, this one is dedicated to her

It’s the tiny things you remember

when someone meets death

and leaves,

how she was a wildflower,

a poppy at the roadside and

distant in certain seasons.

My nomadic mother,

dancing from desert to desert.

Sometimes she had children.

Sometimes we were nothing.

I cling to her reflection

like mine, sharp and fractured,

sometimes beautiful in its brokenness.

Until I meet death too,

She will greet me

from the bunches of poppies

swaying in the desert.

I wish I had
more than two hands
to touch you
everywhere at once

dip your fingers
into my starving mouth
push your fingers
down my waiting throat

use your hands to form
praying hands with mine
to me, our hands are gods