(1.)

she writes
as if it is a magic trick
where she lays a penny behind god’s ear
and waits for a flower to grow
behind her own

and if you’re trying to still
the kind of hunger that has you
clenching your teeth

you know…
such as the pursuit of poetry?

her way
works so much better
than mine

so much better
than hating the cigarette
only for the parts
that didn’t burn you right.

(2.)

the first thousand times
I felt that mix of aspirin and toothpaste
dance me dizzy
across a paper stage

I thought I was falling in love with you.

now I know

those odes to the wrong muse
were only snow globes
filled with paracetamol

something to numb our bruises

and not the firework seeds
that birth new strawberry fields
across barren pasts

not a beauty
worth the wound.

(3.)

Lately

what I present on paper platters
as poetry

were only the patterns
in which my fingertips
let slip their ink

while I tried to stitch my thorns back on.

(4.)

She would have found it easier

if I had let my love for her
die in a draft

and maybe I would have done it too

had I not let the tomb that is silence
already grow too full.

(5.)

Maybe it’s the recoil
from the cut on my lip
maybe I just forgot how to smile at strangers

maybe I gambled it all away
at the altar of my faults
trying to win back the bravery it takes
to ask someone if I am still visible
from unknown points of view.

“Are we both here, or is it only you?”

(6.)

Oh god

how I wish to exist in their fictions

slightly drunk
and as shamelessly fleetful
as I wished to be perceived.

(and Poet,
if you do decide to make me a part of this,
don’t forget to get the accent wrong.
After all,
we’re all only murmuring starlings
playing the telephone game anyway.)