the creaking of the rope makes my stomach turn
you’re my brother
and I heard the sound of death on your soles

my soul sensed it
I smelled it on your breath

“I think I’m dying” rode on the vapors of stale liquor

swam into my nostrils and circled into my ventricles

I am the only one that thinks I am going crazy
and I don’t know what to do

I’m the son of a pastor - I sin more than anyone I know

but it doesn’t matter because I’m dying

and I’m going to hell

cheers 

I don’t want anyone else but you. I want to see your face in the morning, in the windows reflecting off of the broken glass from last night. the beer bottles overturned in the kitchen on the floor reflecting my remorse and wonder that left me years ago now haunting me as ghosts.

your breasts hold my life source. when you breathe it is a breath of fresh air and sometimes when you are sleeping I press my ear to your chest to make sure your heart is beating and air is in your lungs. because I would die if you stopped breathing. if your heart stopped. if you stopped smiling. stopped laughing. stopped holding my hand. stopped sleeping with me.

if you stopped

I’d stop 

static traveled along my palms - through my arms 

to my torso

where it exited my body and found someone else

jesus christ

what could I do

or what did you do

on those three days you were gone

making friends with stonewalls

and the back of closed eyelids

how dead is dead

when you roll a stone enough to open your own tomb

and rise from your own grave

god had nothing to do with that

god’s will is nothing

not compared to man’s 

i am tired - humble - quiet

fill my ask will you?

I breathe in the still photos
hanging from the stringed light fixture
on the trim where the wall meets the ceiling
orbs illimunate the room

reminding me of the way that you and I meet
it’s in the doorways that I lose my way
without much knowledge of whether I’m coming or going

but you’re always waiting in the doorway for me
either way

and your scent brings me back to the days
where I couldn’t see you in the in between
I couldn’t see you in any of these rooms
and now you haunt all of them
mainly the in betweens

the still photographs hanging from the light fixture
hanging from the trim where the wall meets the ceiling
I breathe in the still photos 

I pursed my lips with the tip of my thumb pressed to them
the way I kissed her neck - as if I had owned her

cat calls down the alleyway never draw a woman

you draw a woman by paying no attention to her at all
until it Counts

when her hands are balled into fists and all you see on her face is disappointment

that’s when you find your hands at the small of her back guiding her

to your bed

to your home

that’s got broken things in it

and the two bodies

rocking the bed

are the most broken