you're so loud

your name is a siren

that brings violent coughs to my throat, when i'm twenty seconds away from you

and my skin screams, when your skin cells are my skin cells

and alarms i never snooze go off in my head, when a word – any word – slips from your lips

and the most rapturous knocking beats in my chest, when you're here

gunshots and bombs erupt in my head, when i'm enveloped in you(r cologne, and your fabric, and your body heat)

and yet

the silence sits ringing beside me, when you're asleep and as quiet as a dried-up ocean

ochre

as i type this, you're listening
but you can't hear the words

and when you sing
and when you breathe
i'd like you to know i listen.

every word,
every little whip
from your lip
s.

*

sometimes i can hear my sobs in my breaths.

Forests

They would be all sorts of natural – skin and blood and bones. It's all one and the same, and it's all real and there. Unabridged flesh, metal mouths.

It's like falling into place, but breaking some bones.

*

It's Forest, eleven-years-old, and Tops, just a couple months older.

Tops had big teeth and Forest made fun of her for it. He laughed and laughed, and she shied away from him.

*

Twelve was an odd year for the both of them. There was a lot of sitting, on all sorts of surfaces. Marble, tiles, baskets, gravel, cement, wood, chairs, rocks. Skies, suns, clouds, Saturn's rings, and all those celestial things. It was a dream. But they were just sitting.

*

And then came the years of the Great Separation – Forest and Tops grew and shrank and tripped and tripped and tripped in love, and fell so far away from each other. There was a lot of grasping and clutching and grabbing but sometimes their bodies were buttery.

Sometimes they were just butter, melting away under the heat of elsepeople's gazes.

*

And then Forest came back, and Tops let him in. And it was day after day after day of stories and words and so many words. Have you heards and have you watcheds, then let's go outs and are you guys frees. The geography of a line, and the silence of a car crash.

And then there was Piper.

*

Three consecutive numbers – the first was Forest, the second was Tops, and the third was the night. There was a lot of sitting, and a lot of swaying, and a lot of her make-up on his suit jacket. That was when the night was young.

When the night grew creased and even the stars were dull, Tops was alone with her thoughts. And when the sun came up, Tops was alone and her thoughts burst from her skull like a bullet through her brain. It painted her face with the colors of chaos.

*

Forest and Piper could be real good together. They ought to give it a try!

*

Tops was okay.

*

Sometimes she wasn't okay, but most of the time, she was okay. Tops was a skeletal wonder. Real strong spine.

*

It's strange how it all ends, really. Everyone is a princess except the one who wants the crown. And there are no speak nows, no see you tonights, no it was always just yous. It is just smiles that aren't on Tops's lips. Not lost smiles or misplaced grins. They are just not her smiles, and she can't own them.

Pity, though. She would've made a good princess. She would have been a natural princess. Natural as water and forests and volcanoes, but no one's ever going to see her try.

*

 oh, poems in prose! why don't i cut this up in lines and show you the ribbons!

i hope you forget

i hope you forget, in the long run, that i'd ever helped you with anything, because you'd never let me forget it, and you'd never leave my side. i know your type of loyalty – i know you're going to be here long enough for me to scratch myself out of my skin and yell from the top of my lungs for you to listen to me listen to me listen to me, you idiot, listen to what i can't say or understand or think of or watch me when i'm around you – just tell me, you bloody fool, just tell me please what this is, what this all is and just listen to how i shriek, how you tear me apart so viciously and heartlessly, just listen to what you do to me

and it isn't even because of your smile, or your anything – it's because of how i smile because of you, and it's all me from you that wrecks every nerve of my being. it's your arm when it's around me, not the safety or the comfort or the warmth – really, i don't know, i have no right to say "it is" or "it isn't," because you are such a trick of light, and you turn me into an ape traipsing between "this is it" and "this will never be it" –

you make me so stupid
you make me so blind
you make me so deaf
you make me so warm

i hope you forget how it was a song nobody knew or could even hear over the sound of a million whispercaresses floating in the air. i hope you forget the closeness – just a couple of feet – i hope you forget the way everyone looked that night, i hope you forget how you didn't say a word. i hope you forget about small eyes and big eyes and size and just everything, i hope you forget about things that pull you away from me sometimes (oh, yes, i know, how so very possessive, m – oh, you know it, you know i am)

do everything, do everything you feel like – and although i say so, don't ever forget a single thing. don't you dare do that for me. i'm afraid of being away from you, is all

(there, I just said it, i'm scared you'll forget about me – didn't you see that?)

Another Wrinkle in Time

he was, in all ways, carried by
the waves of time:
sailing on and on in his boat of skin;
he looked below,
and lo and behold,
creased blue ripples so akin
to the wrinkles his aged face brings
to the view of an average stranger.

it seems the clock had been malleable,
for time had stretched far and wide:
panic had gripped him, and its chiding had
struck him,
dumb and a little less than alive

a thunderstorm came, and the ocean was hideous
and rude, and cruel, and a lot more than vicious!
so his white hair grew paler
and his wrinkles sank deeper;
and he'd blown all the clock's hands backwards –
he cried,
"oh, time, confound you! wait just a little bit longer!"

and so the lightning gathered up all its power
and exploded into the morning
and painted the sky with vivacity and precision,
and seven different kinds of vibrance
and in all this beauty, he had not noticed
that his skin had raced to crumple
and his hair had rushed to whiten
and his fingers had ached to tremble
and that his soul was a little worn-out
and breaking along his body's cracks

but! his boat had come ashore
land and sand all by his lonesome, at last
and the castle of the alchemists once more,
just like how he'd dreamed in the past
he knocks with all the knocks his body can muster
and he finds the best of them, of all the alchemists
she asks,
"how can i help you, sir?"
and he says, all certain,
"Immortality, please."
and she nods, a sweet smile on her lips
– a flower, more than anything –
she asks,
"would you like peace with that?"

next is a flat kind of beeping,
like the calmest of tornadoes
and the quietest of hurricanes.
steady, steady, steady – right.

oh, god. it is the machinery that betrays him.