Poetry

November 17, 2024 

7:35pm 

your golden hair 

and your blue stare 

and your sense of relief 

when i faded away quietly 

haunt my nights 

and all my fantasies 

of an alternate reality 

my rose-frozen cheeks  

glisten with sprankles 

you branded on my face 

to match the sparkles in your eyes 

while they roll down past my lips 

that whisper your name 

glowing in the dark 

and in all of my poems 

i still feel the fabric burns 

from your bleach-soaked rags  

scrubbing at my skin 

in your nightmares of me 

burning away the existence of us 

from Earth’s memory 

with firestones 

you keep locked away...

i hope one day she escapes 

November 22, 2024 

8:16pm 

only your ghost 

haunts the Carolinas now 

still, i need to run to Georgia 

and beg the mountains for amnesia

atop Cloudland Canyon i realize 

i’m even closer to your life now than i was before

so, what if i crossed over to Chattanooga 

and ran my fingers through your hair once more?

felt your hands around my throat again

and too far up my thighs and

fumbled under sheets just to hear your guilty, labored sighs

and love you in secret one last time?

what if i dared even closer? 

followed the rivers till i reached Old Hickory 

what if on the way i tell the trees 

what you did to her and to me

let my tears become a part of Tennessee

and she doesn’t know to do the same 

so i ask the trees to keep it that way 

to spare her the pain

you, on the other hand, 

should never walk in the forest again

November 25, 2024
12:38pm

for her

the revelers are driving me mad

with their praises of a false relation

worshipping him for the way he looks at you

unaware it’s all a lie

on their knees they pray to a god

for a love like yours

and i want to scream warnings

from the cliffside

or ring the town bell

or respond to their letters

and tell them not to curse themselves

with such a damned invocation

they print your anniversary portraits

in their local papers

and post them on their doors in celebration

of tall tales

to come out swinging

and meet the full force of my June twin

is too forbidding

but would it be so unbecoming

to simply whisper in the ear

of one of your disciples

so that perhaps they’ll share with you

what i’m too afraid to do?

November 25, 2024
2:10pm

my star twin and i

she has no idea how cosmically connected

we are

she is the exultant version of me

light where i am dark

ally where i am saboteur

altruistic where i am unthinking

forthright and quick to dance in spotlights

where i lurk in shadows and shroud in secrecy

jewelweed where i am poison ivy

i was once her and she was once me

until you came to us both

and now we’re only powerless touch-me-nots

engulfed by your Reeds

you crush her leaves

hold her underwater

where she shines clear

until three more years pass

and she no longer shines at all out of fear

you rub her against my marks on your skin

until i become unbecoming

a version of me

i never could have imagined until you

turned my reflection into this

monstrous villain, scrubbing away

the mistake of me harder and harder

until i feel the corrosion of us from here

your remedy for our sins

leaves us all skinned

then heals us all cheap enough

to flee the scene

burned

and boiled

and bleeding