dark your heart at rest on the mantel, loosing time with your grandfather's clock. crouched over your ill-lit desk, hunched over your minuscule work, the minutiae of gestures you make as you fix the small broken things that you fix. in silence here you groom the grief, burnishing old emotions and letting them rise like reflections in the curve of old brass. with oiled talons you separate each strand and make them gleam with your mourning. whatever cannot be gained on this perch was never worth having, an affirmation with each self-loving stroke.

once, you and i (a chapter, a story) were carving an exit. one hand on you, one hand for the axe that gets us through, in your hand the light that glows blue. once, you and i (a limerick, a pun) were pacing through graveyards. eulogies and obituaries dredge up around our ankles, our knees, our hips, but the brightness glows between our mouths. once, you and i (a boulder, a breakwater) were learning the shore, finding the inlets, gracing new ground. the sun rises and falls but between us, the light does not falter. once, you and i (a bet, a lifeline) stumbled separately, then found each other's hands.

The silent house nags at me, magnifying what can be heard—the slow leak of the faucet I can’t fix, the whining of a stomach digesting cheap food—but I keep it bone quiet at night now because it assures me that no other human is in here with me. The rattle of my own lungs is so audible I am sure there are no other beating hearts.
Still I startle at the wind, verify locked doors, overinspect dark corners and closets I know are empty. I am not being chased by him any longer, i dont think—it’s been years since the last contact—and my exes have learned to stay away in the same manner by which my friends have learned to call first and expect little.
What I am being stalked by now is my own fear, the murmuring of my terrors inside my veins. What haunts me now is not a spirit, not even a memory, but a possibility: I have had enough near misses, surely my death has figured me out. How many lives am I granted? How many escapes, how many guardians, how many serendipitues? Behind my bedroom door a car crash, in the attic an active shooter, in the back of my closet an intruder. Under my bed, the long, slow arc of cancer; in my bed, the hush and hurry of overdose.
At best I am an uneasy sleeper, and more likely than not to get up when my brain prompts me at 3am to listen more closely for a second heartbeat. Walking through the dark house in the middle of the night each night, throwing open doors and cabinets, standing motionless in the dining room to be sure I haven’t heard footsteps in the basement. Barefoot, fearful, the pressure of my mounting luck bearing down between my shoulder blades. How much longer can I go unharmed, when there is so much harm to encounter in the world? This streak has been too long, I am preparing for its end.

i miss the whiskey wet of myself, my own outstretched heart, solvent in the bright beers of this city, reaching for others' smiles and jokes and bright eyes. dried up i lurch against the plaster walls that patch this poor town together, evasive, alone, and scared, scraping elbows and wrists against limestone, coming up red with brick dust. the me that once floated through half-lit streets, arm in arm with laughing dancers and stumbling grace, lurks in the center of my guts, twisting remembered happiness in her fists, throwing handfuls of past adorations up into my mouth. half-dry brain forgets what its goal was, reviews dormant friendships and stalled socializing and decides regret has always been my home base anyway. wasted or unlubricated, i have never been far from guilt.

in the cashier's line and my heart begins to race, my pulse begins to rise, erratic, thrusting my body into reaction. my head swims and my cheeks heat and i think i could faint standing right here in this convenience store for no better reason than that i am sober.
at work someone drops a stapler behind me and my reaction is too blatant to not have to laugh off to those around me. but the panic that has risen in my chest still threatens to choke me, my breath is shallow and high and fast. my hands are shaking and i wish i could physically press the anxiety down back into my stomach, but it spreads and spreads for no better reason than that i am sober.
interaction after interaction, i deal with the surprise, the doubt, the you're-joking-right questions of people i used to down bottle after bottle alongside. one raised eyebrow and i think i could sink into the floor, or possibly self-immolate, based just on how i feel in these moments. the depression has already risen above my throat, wet and still rising, and i think maybe my next drink will be a nice long dose of self-hatred, the mud of my loathing and fears, for no better reason than that i am sober.
quiet, calm, alone in my home, the thought crosses my mind that i will probably die the next time i do coke. and this doesn't cause sadness, or worry, or fear, but a tight, sarcastic smile, and a whole embrace of that eventuality. my death and i hold hands comfortably now for no better reason than that i am sober.

in the morning i thrill towards the sunrise, the pale plate of the lifting sun across a horizon where you and i have walked. the pink of your mouth, the bright of your skin, the retreating darkness of your eyes as they open to mine, there is nothing here that does not remind me of you. the birds that race across the horizon call your laughter back to me, trill the pert melody of my heartbeat when your hands are on my face. when, finally, i must bow my head and walk into my day, it is with you applied to my parched soul, memories burnishing my desert skin, the taste of you strung across me tip to tip.

Cirrus like skeletons in the sky, and the waxing moon like a heart in a cage. Adam lost a rib, and the world flourished in myth: but you and I are not bone, or clay and spit, or padlocked boxes of the sensuous unknown. Standing in your kitchen, chest to chest, palm to palm, we are as much the wind and shadows and moon as we are bloodborne mammals, cold and hot with longing. If I am gentler for your touch, I will later prick myself on my own claws to be sure of my sting; if I am hardened to your grace, I have lost already the key to the padlock on the box. Be soft here with me, and refuse to be mute. I wish for your teeth meeting in my throat, I wish for the hush of your breath against my cheek. Whisper to me all your secrets, breadcrumbs to the place where you hide. Where neither of us is asked to go, we build a garden, and grow.

Vows, month 3

Resign yourself to the wholeness of my love. Stop fighting me, and I will stop fighting you. Our resistance is so similar, yours and mine, born of wary self determination and staunch independence. You trace my scars with kind words, I put my mouth to your hard-won skin. Be soft here with me, and refuse to be mute. Where neither of us is asked to go, we build a garden, and grow.

when i am king you will be first against the wall -- "paranoid android", radiohead

when the revolution comes, we will all be asleep in our beds. we will be asleep in times square, we will be asleep at the wheel, we will be asleep in our cubicles and on airplanes. we have slept so well, beloved, but soon it will be time to wake.

when the revolution comes, it will be quiet. it will be the word "no", whispered at first. it will be a routine changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. it will be an easy, purple dawn. it will be the rhythm of the iron wheels on wooden tracks, but not the whistle, not the warning, not yet.

six weeks post-withdrawal

Eating less and throwing up more, you've lost weight? You look great! Thank you, thank you. I am made of coal, layers of dead things condensed into fuel that is only kindling, only kindling, but thank you, I think the black looks good on me too.
Waking up during the night crying, your skin is so clear! Thank you, I scrub with salt every morning, burnish with bar soap and dollar store body lotion. The minerals feel at home with me, become part of my sedimentary complexion, the grit that sloughs off of me when I sweat for the cum of my lover.
Social aversion tickling the edge of agoraphobia, why aren't you coming out tonight? So that when I do go out, I am standing in a crowd of people daydreaming about my attic, with the windows that won't open and the dust begetting dust begetting dust, and how easy it would be to dismantle myself cell by cell into that same dust, to let my blood and spit and bile evaporate and crack apart bits of my own bones and grind my teeth enough that the next owner can only wonder at the amount of dust in the attic in the house that they buy.
Smoking so much that the cough has come back, isn't it a lovely night? Just look at the moon. The moon and Mercury and Mars, triumvirate of my body, two elbows and a rib cage beating. The pretentiousness of war, who am I fighting? What is there to say to myself other than that I am yellow cowardly, yellow foolish, yellow bruise-just-healed. Red inside of my eyelids, red where I bit my nails down too far, red between the teeth I can't bring myself to care for, great riptide that swamps me in loathing and fear. The moon and Mercury and Mars, and I a compass between them, retching up the beauty and the bracing of their weight.

Damaged and unguarded, the length of me cast haphazard over your bed, I barely hold my own head up in the presence of your grace. My hands feel heavy, heavy, slow, casting long arcs out over your skin, hoping to catch at your pleasure, lure your soft sighs. Mouth to mouth, I would no sooner give up the taste of you than my own heat-making, heat-seeking tongue. The startle of the word love on your lips never gets old, never gets worn, never loses its glitter and promise.

I am tired, love. I have met you at the crest of a long journey, a thankless chore of a decade which took its measure from my soul and skin. I touch your jaw, circle your ear, brush back your beautiful unruly hair, sapping tiny bits of life from your body. If I asked you to fill me, we would both waste away.

Instead we build a new scaffolding, a sturdy tower of intertwined brawn: we are neither of us too scared, we are neither of us too weak, we are neither of us too lost to raise this up. My grip on your arms, the soft lean of you late at night onto my chest. A perfect faith: that when we ascend what we have built, we will still have our feet in the earth and our souls in the sea.