“Hey,” you cock your head to one side, trying to get me to look up. 

“Hey.” I do look up, but only for a second. Whenever we used to talk about serious things, I would stare at my feet. It used to help me focus on whatever I was saying.

“How are you doing?”

“That’s a loaded question these days. How are you?”

“I’m all right.” You’re looking past me, looking at something I know you can’t see. Rain on your glasses. “Same as always.”

“Yeah,” I sigh, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. Glad I remembered my lighter. You start to say something then stop yourself. Still rain on your glasses. You reach up to take them off, start to make them clean.

“I’ve been eating a lot of ice cream.” You’re smiling the way you always do, without any teeth showing. Your eyes are so round and I think about how we used to press our faces together. Your eyes looked like blue wings. They look like wings right now, too.

“I believe it.” I do not mean to smile but I do. I smile uncontrollably. I’m not thinking about how much I’ll regret the smiling later. The thought of me a few hours from now, sitting in my room with my mouth closed, remains distant and unimportant. 

“I miss you,” I want you to say, so I can tell you that I’ve missed you so much, too; that I think about you every day, Danika, that I want to kiss you until I forget I am alive. But you don’t say anything, so I don’t say anything, and you’re still looking past me at something you can’t see.

“It’s hard being alone,” I finally say. At first your only response is to breathe.

“I know, Em. Everything is gonna be okay.” You put your hand on my shoulder and I want to pin you against the wall, kiss you so hard that our past and future break, but I don’t. I shut my eyes and wait for the moment to pass, for your hand to move, to fall asleep again. I think about all the times you’ve seen me around recently, sleep-walking. You take small, loud steps. I stare at the ground for a long time, but when I finally look up to respond, you’ve left.

we sit on your front porch
you’ve got a green sweater on
your face is like a perfect stone
flocks of doves falling
from your cigarette

you didn’t think your hands would remember to be soft for me
haven’t we been here before?
my fingers collect your hair
like baskets of cherry blossoms
for me you’ll shut your lungs off
float around the fixed point
of the first kiss

i am just myself with you
i found love lodged in the void again
but you are not a rocket launching
and i am not the galaxy
go easy on me
like the maple syrup in the morning
until my eyes feel sticky
i can trickle down smooth
you knit a smile into your teeth
and i want to break it loose
we can go slow
i’ll bite a compass into your lips
when it swells, you will not forget this
ours is a world of dim lights
my waist is just a shadow
you can chase
c’mon, it’s all right…

but we are sitting on your front porch
across the street from the barber shop
the sky is birdless
roses ripping themselves up behind your cheeks
your eyes are open and resigned
and you stutter when you speak.            

I’ve been dreaming of the day my hands blitz your hips
in a frantic, full-body quest for your lips.
You flutter and scramble beneath my fingertips
like doves gasping for breath,
for freedom.
We could be so free, free, free
We could be so free,
you and I.
You. Me.
We follow the flocks of lovers we’ve watched in old movies,
the lovers that never lived in the hearts of our parents.
They are ever-shifting, interchangeable,
patterns we never learned,
but still, we know
(sometimes you just know, you know?)
We’ve never touched but when you speak,
I hear your kiss, and it’s broken wing—
We could be so free, free, free
We could be anything.

Are you afraid, I wonder,
to believe in the power of feathers?
The ascension of a laugh, bubbling from her mouth,
for your ears alone?
I dream about burying whispers in your ears.
We could be so free, free, free
We could be— no matter where we are,
no matter where we’ve been— 
We could be here.

Unfold your eyes, my brilliant dove,
take a breath (take a nap)
and I swear, the sky
will still
be there. 

kiss me gently
like eyelashes brushing up against a rose—
kiss me like the orchards look at night.
kiss me the way you blow out birthday candles—
kiss me like my lips are your birthday wish.
kiss me like a lover.
kiss me like i was your best friend’s older brother.
kiss me like there’s sunlight in your spine.
kiss me like everything you’ve ever wanted is mine—
kiss me like you can have it,
all of it, if you just

kiss me like i was the last good thing.
kiss me with your mouth shaped like a wedding ring.
kiss me like the world was black and white
and to save the world, you had to
kiss me colorful and wild.
you had to kiss me like a child—
i am open, and yours, the moment you
kiss me like i’m paradise.
like i’m the water to your ice
like i’m giving you a solid reason to be there.

kiss me
like my jokes are funny.

kiss me like you’re sexy, and you know
it’s the only universal truth.
kiss me like the moonlight kisses the curves of your waist.
kiss me like you like the way i taste.
kiss me like your lips are covered in ink
and i’ve got paper-teeth,
baby,
find a way to write this down
your hands uncertain
eyes shut tightly
lips pressed together
like raindrops on the concrete.
stain these paper teeth.
find a way into this.

i know that we can do it,
we just have
to
you know—

It starts with me sitting in my bed,
a stack of broken bones,
counting my bruises, my cracks, and my wear and tear.
I’ve been flipping through too many magazines, pictures of women
that look like cheap cherry-flavored candy.
I’m just about to leave
when, suddenly,
I hear a knock at the door.
I click my bones back into place and open wide
to see you standing there,
in your sundress.
The one I told you was my favorite,
and I smile—
like a fault line.
Your image envelopes me like daylight
but when you walk into the room,
you are a solar eclipse in Ancient Egypt:
Absolutely devastating.
Tonight, you like when I’m corny like that.
You bring your hands to my face like a declaration, and I sense it.
You and I are coming to the edge, to the pencil tip, to the roses ever-trembling on the cliff of your lips—
I feel my toes curling underneath the weight of this just before I take the plunge
Girl, you are living, breathing proof that disorder increases in the universe.
My heart skips likes a five year-old  kid on a Pogo stick attempting Hop Scotch for the first time when you kiss me,
when you’re near me, as your mouth blooms to receive me—
We shed our clothes like we are burning, and my
half-digested-love-once-churning-too-large-to-be-released comes dripping
down my chest. Aristos, aristos, aristos—
The first time I heard
that that word meant ‘the best’ I knew
that a wordsmith long ago
had known what it meant to love you.
For one night, I am the whisper swallowed by your tide.
For one night
THIS night
you are angel-blue liquid sunshine
and I am your humble prism, chosen to filter the light—
You fall asleep in my arms. So deeply wrapped in dreams that all nearby alarm clocks
commit suicide,
because your minute-sized hand won’t separate from mine
This night? Defies time.
We are everything we seem.
We are so much more than the most.
We’re in love, or we’re something close—

but when the morning breaks the evening’s seams,
I remember.
You and I,
we got so close.
We were
only ever close
to aristos, aristos, aristos.

You can’t miss what you never had.

My eyelids crumble all around me, like ancient walls
that struggled to stand in the first place.
It has been so very nice to kiss you—
I dissolve into a dream.

————-

First, there was endless open space;
there you were,
brilliant and vibrant
against the infinite white
extending in all directions—
the world was radio static against
your symphony. I crackled and crunched
out of key
hoping you might hear me,
hear how hard I had been struggling to get through to you
but I was drowning, strangled by my own power lines—
White, white, white, white
making spirals around your body;
your eyes, like angel-blue sunshine,
dripping sweet fire drops in a circle ‘round my feet,
burnt me up and taught me to ascend on the plumes
of Lover’s smoke.

The ghost of something electric overtook you,
and you were swallowed by the white, white noise.
My heart ached like the ocean—
Only your sands could bring the swell.

————

Your softness drenched me. My toes, wrapped around the edge
of total ecstasy— To be intoxicated with your tenderness
was everything I had been too cautious to imagine—
The endless white space was infected with technicolor kisses,
the smiles I had never seen before, and your eyes
(God, your eyes, your eyes, your eyes, your eyes)
clawing at my lips like a revelation.
Danika, bring me to your mouth and you will taste
the sweet serum of your breath, your delicate body electric—
You will taste what it means to cross the threshold,
to be one with the tide, the push and pull, the give and take,
hand to hand, my lips to yours—
If you look in my windows, I’ll unlock the door.

———— 

There’s a way you look at me sometimes;
it isn’t love, or lust, but a curiosity.  
It has been 5 years since I first loved you—
I wade through white space and impenetrable color,
relentless seas and deafening noise.
I can’t help but try to make you understand.
I can’t help but keep on going—
Like a hurricane that somehow
fell in love
with
the sand.