LanternGothique

Dear Peter, I wanna know you the way grandpa archie knows his KFC original recipe chicken breast. I'll crack those rib bones and suck down your marrow and your meat. More than that, though, I'll remember the spaces between them- like those things we wordlessly agree not to mention. How our first kiss felt like the dud firework that lay on its side, forever dormant And how even now I turn my cheek to you when you lean in. How every time I catch your eyes I flinch because I know I don't deserve that look And how later I'll sketch it out, penciling pity into those sea-swept eyes to explain to my mirror what they must have seen in me. You

a side-lying vesuvius: we barely sputtered before we b u r s t - bloodied confetti on downtown streets to the boats too late kill the baby quickly or not or not, for the delicate preservation of one life-not-clutched closely enough

He was in love with what they were, a perfectly weaved cobweb in the back corner of each others minds.

i can't feel my hands. dry and brittle. they might be bird bones. i'm sneaking out too early in the morning while you're still sleeping and the snow is packed down under my boots. i like that i look ridiculous in leopard print fuzzy pajamas pants as i start sweeping snow off your car. your neighbor (our neighbor, you would correct, if you heard me say this) comes out into the harsh cold and he glares at me. "he's making you clean his car?" i'm a wasp caught behind the screen of a window. "oh no. he doesn't know i'm doing this. it's just a surprise." i can feel the timber wolves of my words as i smile. "wow. you're really nice." and his featu

i. she's tucked in the corner of the bookstore's floor, slaving over words that spiral like the tails of dragonflies, and her sadness is confused for beauty. she doesn't notice the way they stare at her as they wander past, useless dabbling, as if they'll be struck with purpose if they can recite the titles of fevered novels. sparrow eyed, she continues soaking up the aches of other times to ruin the one that startles against the back of her knees. ii. three years ago, he had a dream that birds had teeth and pebbles could cry and water painted the sky. he wrote his miserable findings down in a notebook and somehow, someone or another got the

I do not want this body, this thick grotto so like a corpse: it does not seem I have a choice. it weighs upon me, it snags on my edges. thus trapped, I caress its thighs, I break its wrists. what else can I do with it, this grim useless thing?

my heart (and the vicious folds of its teeth, those pale watery things) has devoured me like a pearl. unconvincingly bare in my eggshells, my linen, I scrape by like a drudge— I've just the hunch in the shoulders, just the lowering of the eye. I press my tongue to the top of my mouth. does this seem forward of me? I am sorry: the poor thing is used to having more to touch.

December's beach is wind and spray and fit for passing nights like this It's not so easy walking here on silvered dunes in summer's skin   with wind to worry twisted braids and eyes so full of ocean. December's moon is mist and cloud and brooding over nights like this it's far too easy being here   with fire entombed in graves for light no line dividing sky and sea but eyes, empty of ocean.

i. your mother swallowed acid fireflies extacy- these locked your stubborn fetal jaw, lit you up from behind lidless eyes. [    ], stoke that fire, spoon-feed those flames 'til they rise: to warm and loosen your vocal chords, to melt your heart. ii. Paul could not cannot read ghost letters in grey ink iii. shake the son but shun the daughter. what madness, what madness is this? iv. something of a beautiful deceit, she was. not that she's not now, i just wouldn't. know.

Shadows puppets Draped their wailing skins across her neural walls; Somber enfolds Pertaining to a light no one could see. Not even he, The man whose bare black hand once Plucked their heartstrings frail, Like some sentimental benefactor Desperately derailed. And though this dire malady of mindset Now conscripts it's own Shadow troupe, He fears nothing. Nothing, As they clinch at fine strands of hair (And artifice) Scaling her ramparts, Filbert in hand, Coating them a deeper shade of apathy.