He always spoke to me in hushed tones.
Asked me once:
"We're you raised to believe that we all meet up in heaven after we die?"
I only heard the first part of his question,
so naturally,
I said no.

a fist, a hiss
near miss
oh bliss

a wish
a kiss
familiar
as this

"It's pretentious to ignore everything unclean."

-9chambers

shuffling slowly to our false alter
fists balled tight to fight the falter
bowed down in thought
face frowned and wrought
considering what lies may cost him
knowing truth is not an option

You cannot possibly think you are

pro
voc
at
ive
.

What language this; pale hieroglyph
wherein its pith belies the rift
‘tween fall and lift, from root to drift.

Askance its i’s impersonal
collusion high, interlopable,
fastidious, bereft of fixedness
twisted mix ridiculous.

Everything synecdoche;
nothing what it is.

To see a grin pashed out as though a sin,
a flash of happiness on a thread so thin
dashed for dashings sake, upon a whim,
is at last a tipped ballast within,
crashed through the surface into light so grim,
alabaster reflection of you, and her, and him

rare to see him boastful so, yet in those moments
when his touch would come and go -
his hand a moth, alighting on the firey perch
of delicacy, a delicacy to burden it past breaking
shrugging off the offence as though it were by invitation
proud ruiner
were his scrimshaw any indication

despite what you ought
you follow, not wrought
but caught, like a spouse
from closet
to hothouse

Life like a nightmare of barely borne crosses
I have not forgotten my gains and my losses