izzy

You smile for me and goddamn it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Quiet settles on our shoulders like a blanket and we are warm in it. Some days I think the only thing my mouth has ever wanted to do is kiss yours. This is what my lips were made for. I do, I kiss you soft and you kiss back and I think, ‘I will never get sick of this’. I think, ‘I won’t ever have to’. Your fingers are warm wrapped in mine but paper dry. I sit across from you as our cells start to break down. Our hair grows long and white. Our nails yellow. Our cheeks hollow and I think, ‘My cheekbones have never looked this good. My jawline is so chiseled.’ We shed our skins, muscle and tendon stripped away until we are sitting here across from each other in just our bones and you look at me and you see everything.

*

sarah

Nothing to be done, I’m afraid
Some things run too deep
I threw the baby out with the bathwater years ago
He must be far out in the ocean by now
Shuttled by waves in the briny bass deep
Chuckling at the tickle-taste of seaweed
What I’m saying is, I’m in too far now
And I left no trail of breadcrumbs behind me
Just a mess of tipped over bookshelves
The past looks like a fucking riot from here
And I can taste danger on the wind
As I’m burning the toast and leaving the car unlocked
My mind’s a mess these days
Keeps skipping in the grooves
Keep finding myself halfway down the hallway
Asleep in my underthings
Dust creased in my sockets like eyeshadow
But life will spit back out what it won’t have
And there’s that fishing-line tug in my heart
Ten little fingers, ten little toes
Squirming in the out-to-sea
Running the tides through my veins
Heaving my chest as the moon drags the wet to the dry

*