The Darkest Hours

Portrait of you
Painting on my skin
4AM
Painting with my fingers
In pale, lonely darkness
Fingertips are my breath
Breath silhouette:
You.

Peter Pan Whimsy

The Part of You
That is
Peter Pan
Whimsy
Striped pants with rolled ankles
Scuffed up dress shoes
Chimney sweep tap toeing
Cigar or short cigarette hanging from your mouth's corner
Black knee socks
Suspenders with thumbs underneath them
White A-shirt and slender musculature with an extra tat you didn't expect
Caressing
Mind blowing white breasts
Smoke clouds wafting over blue sky
Stars smattering blinking off and on and distant car head lights
Making love in the grass that looks purple in the moonlight
There is nothing
Nothing
Fevered
Pursued
And radiant
A sideways glancing smile
Your twinkling eyes
Your smart mouth twinkling eyes
And a young, strong, daisy you plucked from the widest field and put it in my hair
In my hair
In my hair...

You are gasping.

On the Couch with my Roommates

I always chose the end seat, which is the safest
Close to the arm rest and the coffee table and the escape route to the kitchen
I could offer you drinks and soups and scraps of salads
I could pour the iced tea
The one Tami always put her stickers on to show it was hers
We laughed about it later...
The four of you all snuggle like lovers
Watching Ever After for the thousandth time
My heart races
I focus on the science experiments sitting on the sill of the window
And Stacy's plants that annoy Kathleen
And the way Heather's cardigan rests: burgundy against her goose-down skin
And I try to understand how you can assess and re-assess and continue in this sort of close-ness
And the skin on my cheeks is burning with a fierce and fiery complex sadness I rush to the wardrobe
And fling on my jacket and scream silently into the cold dark wind.

Second Baptism

You lost yourself
In your baptism
Through a televised computer screen,
You bathe in The L Word and
QaF and all the other things
Because you don't have
Someone to hold hands
Through something like this
Not so straight-up promised land,
You drink whiskey straight
And put your Doc Martens on the tablecloth
And fist your Skittles
Straight from the bag
In the back of the movie theater:
Feet on the seat
Reading old biographies of NBA stars
And watching a girl change clothes through
The hide-a-scope that is the side mirror,
You wonder if your gym teacher pulled you aside to be-friend you because she knew
You belonged
You were one of her
Of Them
The Unspeakables;
Hand in his back pocket, eyes on her collar bone
Hard lips or soft ones,
Your thumb feels righter on the top of a hand.

She Wore a Blue Dress

Green eyes
Flashed in the streetlight
I could see the way
She moved under the satin
The pink light
Fingertips throb with longing
Lip gloss
Applied with gusto
Sends a glare back into the
Brown and white of my eyes
Rain trickling in the gutter
My mouth on my mug of coffee
My heart tumbling through my ribcage.

Cramped in This Closet

No reason to open your mouth
So you shut it
Stuff your hands down deep in your pockets
Continue to debate on eggshells as the air catches in a pocket in your throat you didn't know you had, but with which you are becoming deceptively familiar
And everything feels like lying
And not  lying... Protecting? Someone. Everyone but yourself.

The floor is carpeted with red carpet like your house when you were small
And your mother's old stuffed animals were there
The orange and white striped elephant that smelled like mothballs and old shoe laces.

When you close the door you know you are safe
It slides carefully, careful not to catch your small fingers
And you sit in the dark and suck your thumb  where no one can see you

Self-comfort.

You want to scream it.  Loud.  For everyone to hear it.
Post it publicly.
On a post with your picture.

But you wrap a deep scarlet scarf around your mouth and close your lips around the horrid feeling fur.

Gags are so fucking lonely.