It Is August

It is august

It is summer; it is

Sticky-hot, the air so warm

It is like velvet over my skin

It is august, 

It is summer, 

and your lips

Are on mine, yes, 

And on my neck, yes, 

And I am saying your 

Name like it is holy

yes

And i am 

d

  r

   o

     w

        n

           i

             n

                g

in you, 

             yes

And I’ll admit that 

you’re the only god 

i’ll ever believe in, yes, 

And my heart is trying to

Escape its (rib)cage (yes)

You are e a t i n g  m e  a l i v e

And i am a rabbit on the altar

A living sacrifice 

your hands 

around my throat

Burning your touch is burning me i

am on fire fire fire 

You are the sun in my hands

And i am icarus 

Falling 

down

down

down

i'm in your bed,

my hands in your hair,

and i told you i could drown

in you so it's suicide,

so it's sunrise,

so it's summer it's august i was

faithless until i met you

(and i think i love you.)

i think i got a concussion this morning and have been feeling Not From This Plane of Existence for the past eight and a half hours but also im in the writing mood so i'm sorry in advance for the absolute crack you'll be getting

I fell in love with you in the summer. 

It was hot and dry and my lips cracked and bled every time I smiled. You made me smile a lot. I like to think it was a metaphor. You made me taste death every time I laughed. Or maybe life. I could never distinguish the two with you. 

Anyway. I dreamed of you, sometimes. You made me laugh and my lips would crack and bleed and you would lean over and kiss me. My friend said it means I desired intimacy but that the blood meant I was scared. She was into Freudian dream analysis. I never liked him, anyway. 

I guess she wasn’t wrong though. I dreamed about you more than I’d like to admit. In my dreams, you were poetry. In my poetry, you were the dream of you. I laughed and my lips bled and you kissed me and I tasted death. Sometimes you wouldn’t stop at kissing me. Sometimes you would keep kissing me, keep swallowing me, keep consuming me until you’d devoured me entirely. 

“Cannibalism as a metaphor for love,” I’d once said. “What do you think?” 

You’d made a face. “I think it’s gruesome. Romanticizes weird things, you know? Like those people who defend the serial killers ‘cause they think they’re hot.” 

I didn’t tell you that sometimes, I dreamed that I bared my neck for you, and that you’d torn it apart, my heart between your teeth. A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism. 

Anyway. It was summer and school was over and everything was golden. When the light hit your eyes right they looked golden. Sometimes they were dark, a soft brown like the piano I tried to teach you to play on and the damp earth after the summer storm. Sometimes they were blue like the sky or the sea and I was suffocating, drowning. When they were gold, they were like amber, sweet-sticky-thick, trapping me. Everything looked golden when you looked at me like that. I didn’t protest so long as you kept looking at me like that. 

It was your birthday yesterday. I wish I didn’t remember. I wish I didn’t text you even though you hadn’t talked to me in months. “Hey. Happy birthday.” It’s dinner time and my mom yells at me because I keep checking my phone. You text me the next day. “Thanks.” I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved or angry. I bite my lip. It’s bleeding again. “No problem.” 

You don’t reply. 

Anyway. I quit piano. I look into my father’s eyes and see you. Blue eyes that make me feel like I’m dying. “Oedipus complex,” my friend says knowingly. “You go after the familiar.” Sometimes I wish I didn’t remember your birthday. You didn’t remember mine. My father didn’t remember my mother’s, but he bought a girl a multi-hundred dollar gift for her birthday. She was closer to my age than his. You sent me a picture of yourself shirtless. My father sent a nude to her. I dated a boy just to see what it was like to be wanted. Maybe that’s why my father cheated. Maybe that’s why you kept talking to me like you could love me. It was summer and everything looked golden and I let you keep using me so long you looked at me like you loved me. I don’t know if I am more like my mother or my father. They are both unhappy. It scares me. Who am I?

Anyway. Sometimes I dream that you kiss me and I taste my own blood on your lips. Sorry about that. Sorry about the mess. Sorry that I bleed every time you speak. Sorry that I gave you my mess of a heart. Sorry that I loved you. I’ll keep bleeding for you. Just keep looking at me like that. Just keep telling me you love me. 

I fell in love with you in the summer. My lips cracked and bled every time you made me smile. I like to think it’s a metaphor. Maybe this summer I won’t remember your birthday. Maybe. 

i have a soft secret wish that conspires against me in the sleepy hours of late afternoon when my big dog sighs into my shoulder and nuzzles under my arm while we both procrastinate his walk a little longer just until we are done being on the couch together, curled up

i need to believe that if he could choose, he would stay looped indelicately, his legs a cascade in the air rolling his back on the only floor i can afford him instead of the romantic impossible wild

there are moments where his ears perk up at a rabbit and he watches their white tail tuck into a bush, like a wink. i don't know what dogs dream about but i hope to god

if he is dreaming about being a wolf he is not disappointed when he wakes up to blunted teeth

Of bad seeds, mad lies and wallflower

your town is grey. on a rainy day, it whispers to the permafrost that has kept you town folks buried up to your chests. you and your ice cocoon — have you lost your voice or never borrowed one?

o valley boy

the midnight sky has lent colour to your eyes, beneath the moon.

your deranged town plants seeds of infatuation / soaking them in tears of yearning / years of learning has taught them how to grow fruits of mad love.

l o v e

orange peels. pomegranate seeds.

last nail in the coffin.

twisted tongues ~ in acid wash.

you sell (demolish) bouquets of wallflowers — taking apart their withering petals, one at a time. they die screaming the hymn of love for your sake : ever parched, swallowing the last drop of your sweetheart ocean…

you hell hummers

melt in the slightest inconvenience of love.

like mad dogs on a bad day / you lick the leftover lies off a razor-edged knife / stained in scarlet promises of your carved frozen heart.

valley boy, cry a river

like a lovesick infant, choke on the pith of your forbidden harvest ~

moon witness / rinds of ebony & ivory ate your bitter town / when repulsive lies sprouted of rotten seeds / they made you sick.

s i c k

succulent eyeballs. perennial misfortune.

tendrils of affection: limb climbers.

in love ~ with love ~ for love ~ of love

speak now or forever hold your p{i}e{a}ce.

— circadeacademia

the other day we were talking about balance beams because you said that your family had one of those cool winch ones that wrap around trees to make a high wire. even though i was pretty good i had to quit gymnastics at 12 because we couldn't afford dance and gymnastics but. i had something-other.

and i got excited because i think it's a funny story. i didn't have a door for about 4 years. 13-17, or there about. i only got it back because i replaced it myself.

i think my dad took it off the hinges just because his very-macho friend david had said - i do this to punish my kids. and then about a week later it was down on the ground and then eventually rotting in a shed. i used to visit it on occasion and tilt it between two boxes so i could try to walk across the side of it. i have a scar on my foot from attempting the act of balance-beam fancy dancing. it's shaped like a crescent moon. a hinge sliced into my skin when the whole thing slipped out from underneath me.

and you looked at me and you said - what the fuck?

and i said, do you want to see? because i thought the thing you were replying to was the injury. i was already undoing my shoelaces.

you're supposed to have a door, you said slowly. you were a teenager. you - i've seen your house. you lived at the end of the hall.

i didn't understand the problem. so? i wriggled out of my shoe and then my sock.

so, you said it gently, which made me slow down. you said it in the way people tell me that i experienced something bad and i have no idea that it was supposed to be something-else instead. anyone coming down the stairs or in the hallway could see directly into your room. you were in a fishbowl for four years, am i understanding that correctly?

i stared at you, and then said the other things: well, it wasn't so bad. i just wore a towel and tucked myself into a corner to change. i could always just change in the bathroom. privacy didn't really exist for any of us. i wasn't allowed to decorate so it wasn't really my room anyway. i didn't have a lot of things growing up; so it's not like i minded having a semi-public space. my siblings left me alone if i needed them to. what's the big deal anyway.

this is accidentally what emotional vampires incorrectly label as a "trauma dump". this is accidentally how you learn that my house was actually unsafe. i don't even consider this a problem, because everything else was so much worse, in a way. i didn't know it was supposed to be different. at the time, i didn't know what privacy was. i just lied about most stuff and got good at hiding in public. i haven't ever lied about this because i didn't know it was supposed to be different. i am 31.

you looked pale and ready to throw up. you had a right to a door for your room. you were a kid. someone should have helped you.

i was busy examining the sole of my foot. the scar really does look like the moon.