lick your body new again like my tongue

is God’s hand trying to erase and recreate the earth.

For 6 days straight, we will be

what makes the sidewalk blister.

Day 1: in the beginning,

I will find you, pull you into me.

Day 2: we will make the earth

and the sky jealous.

Day 3: I want you to fuck me

bent over a crumpled taxi.

4: in the graveyard of a strip mall.

5: on the steps of the capitol,

in every store, on every mattress that isn’t on fire.

This world is a melting candle

we’re only using for foreplay.

Day 6: You may think I’m in denial,

that I am avoiding the bigger issue here

but you didn’t even look at me

the last time you said I love you

and, shit, if it didn’t feel like the end of the world.

I know this can’t be healthy

(pretending everything is on fire), but baby,

we could be the most beautiful wreckage

in all this smoke.

When the apocalypse does come,

I will rebuild our city with my tongue.

I will suck this world’s ashes from your fingers.

I will refuse to let the fires of this hell

be the only thing that makes us sweat.

When the apocalypse comes,

so will we.

I crashed your car

For Rya

While you were in Japan,

(teaching English to children)

I crashed your car.

It made a horrible crunching sound, so loud

I was sure you must have heard it

from halfway around the world.

That’s why I waited so long to tell you.

The Other Woman

I pretend I don’t love it

when you hold my hand in public,

when you catch a wild hair in the net of your fingers,

when you kiss me right in front of the gas station cashier.

I remember we live in a big city.

I secretly imagine the scandal we could cause

if we lived in a small town, where everyone knew your name

and your bed: how our love would spill like paint cans

across old wooden porches. It would seep

between the cracks of the floorboards,

the way I live beneath your fingernails

when you go home to her.

Static

Somehow, there is silence.

People are running, their mute eyes panicking

like deer who have never seen the oncoming glare

of judgment. A single red flower blooms in the center of her shirt.

She finally looks at you.

Rewind 1 week: she sits in front of you in science and smells like ice cream.

You wonder if she even knows your name—wonder if she would ever notice your thimble

of existence. To them you are nothing but the skinned knees of the student body.

They will read about you, (the ones who are lucky,

who will see death and not meet it) how you walked like a god

unnoticed among them, planned a revolution for your fingers

to pluck pulses like arrows from bows.