Heart break

My heart beats slightly off-kilter now. It doesn't run anymore,
It jogs.
It jumps, pauses, sprints and then walks.

Up and down my staircase ribs, it stumbles, it slips.
It skips, it rattles, it creaks.

Remember when it did that the first time?
You and I had stayed up all night, talking, discovering.
You made me feel like the moon would never give way to the sun.
I thought you were a prince in disguise, fairy tale perfect.

I didn't know that a loving heart could trip into breaking.
I never expected it to feel like falling in love when we were falling out.

But looking at you,
thinking the things I do,
my heart pauses it's marathon, memorizing your face.

Tomorrow I'll wake up somewhere else, will you even miss me?

A Sexual Encounter from the Point of View of a Loveseat

-Twelve hundred dollars and a Pearl Necklace-
He kisses her into my arms; admires my gilt, cream and gold threaded, upholstery. He loves the contrast of her skin against mine. He says so as he slides his hand up her thigh and under her satin slip of a dress. He finds something just as satin and she lets out a gasp of pleasure.

-Venetian and Satin-
Her dress whispers to the floor, intimate as old lovers, and her hips kiss the cushions. Between deep kisses, he notes the plushness. He sighs, blissful, pushing into her and her into me. Her breath comes in short gasps, each one a love letter into my silks. She holds me, shaking.

-Love and Seating-
He cups the curve of her skull, bringing her face closer to his, sharing breaths. Her skin is a blushing umber rose, petals unfolded against cream and gold. She is ripe with need, skin caressing skin until they both begin to burn. When they release, they both cry out in animalistic joy, equally ravaged by waves after waves.

-In years to come, I am a lusty reminder-

June Bugs

Drinking mint juleps with a striped straw,
empty June lungs soon fill with June bugs
and sparkling July promises.
Bitter. The air is bitter with June skies
and July lightning. We called them fireflies,
like tiny beacons to follow home.
By September all our leaves had begun to
brown and the last of the June bugs had
flown South.
These empty June lungs breathe summer and
taste autumn. The sun sets slower, lingering to
glimpse the moon.
The fireflies fade out, one by one, candles
blown out by turning breezes. We're lost in
the dark and tied to each other by red threads.
In December the stars glitter like cracked glass
and dusty diamonds. Our June lungs have frozen
solid, all the air withered and lost in the snow drifts.
Those summer children have long returned to the
ground and all that is left are naked branches.
We remember lemons and the moon longs for the sun.

Disappearing Act

I woke up this morning missing my feet.
Below my ankles was nothing but air,
those two lefties I always claimed to dance with,
the ones too large and flattened,
those feet that I took for granted,
vanished.

By lunch I had lost my hands.
At the wrists I flexed,
stretching invisible fingers toward glasses of milk,
grasping, but not lifting,
dragging knuckles against ivory keys,
simply gone.

At dinner I noticed the hole in my chest.
Oddly misshaped, somehow full of its invisibility,
I touched it with my missing fingers and wondered;
wondered if I was just imagining those tactile senses,
will the rest of me follow suite?
Disappear?

By bedtime I was nothing more than a head.
Resting on a white pillow, dreaming of bodies fled;
wondering where all our pieces go when we fall apart,
aching from lost soles to lost digits,
my head rolled from side to side,
weeping.

In the morning I was gone.

Snowflakes in Black Hair

You are romantic; like snowflakes in black hair,
your smile askew, your hair rakish.
Your lips are roses, pressing themselves together,
parting like every movement is a kiss.

You are quiet; soft spoken like summer rain.
Yet, intense; passionate, provocative, polite.
Your eyes turn into oceans, I could fall hard into,
drowning in them, storm-tossed in softness.

Anxiety

"Oh, hello," I say.
It seems you have come to pay
a visit and I am woefully
unprepared for your company.
My anxiety is like a frightened child,
crawling into my bed, inviting me to share
all of it's nightmares so that sleep seems
terribly far away.
It causes my mind to chuckle at
itself. I know this is silly and foolish,
there is no reason, but that is all the
reason I need to want to fight or fly.
My anxiety is sometimes ever present,
sometimes hardly here, sometimes
creeping along the southern walls of
whichever brain's hemisphere, I do not know.
It drops in, uninvited, at the
most random moments.
Whispering nonsense that makes
only sense to my fears.
It wrinkles the blankets,
races my heart up and down my ribs,
like a ladder to some heaven or hell,
knowing very well there is neither.
It wrings its hands against
imagined slights and old debts.
It trembles at phone calls and
knocks upon the door.
It forgets that we must eat,
forgets we must drink,
forgets all but the encompassing
fears.
My anxiety, it is a friend I do not
want to speak with anymore, but
somehow I can't seem to show it the
door.
Only, opening my arms, pretending
I am fine. I am satisfied with this
shell of a life, hugged by a butcher
with a skillful knife.
My anxiety, it kisses me to sleep,
rolls itself into my waking dreams,
shapeshifts into things I think I can't trust,
then back again.
My anxiety is a living, breathing, being.
A guest that refuses to leave.
A child that wants only to share its dreams.
And I am alone with it.

The Skeleton Remains

The skeletal remains of your kisses
clink around my incisors, tickle the
ivory of my molars, tap dance across
my canines.

At night I can hear them, tinkling
like chandeliers in a breeze. I can
taste the bittersweet, hollowed, bones
of them curled against my tongue.

Their sugar melts into cavities of
emptiness, blackening my teeth with
the ash of them. They rub themselves
against my taste buds, reminders.

In the still of your long absence,
all of my teeth have rotted away, wasted
by the frame of your feelings for
me. Too sweetly  bitter to remain in me.

The ghosts of your kisses have replaced
the skeleton of your love. They howl,
but at least the clink of your chandeliers
against my teeth has ceased.