Leekaara

hey love, how's it going? i heard the other day you skinned your heart. through the grapevine, mind you - i guess you thought your words weren't worth my time. but you're worth my time. i'd twist the clock and hand you the thirteenth hour shattering in the palm of my hand - if i could. remember we used to trip on love and stumble on life? you - with your sultry grins and dancing eyes. me - with my jaundiced laugh and hopeful gaze. when was it that i stopped wishing? when the cold iron bench which stung the backs of my thighs managed to seep into my chest like some warped and sickening joke? when i hit the mirrors for that o

i used to like the summer because i could see you. but the mile between our front porches made my calves burn and my arms swing limply at my sides. the pavement was too clean in that part of town. there were no rocks to occupy my restless, tired strides; there were no sticks to crack beneath my beaten, torn up nike's. "you need new shoes," you once said, that time when we were sitting in the soccer field tearing grass from the dirt. you never did like battered goods. -- i used to like the fall because i could see you. sometimes just your words were all i needed to draw the nails from my palms and take a breath of dead things. "get o

The music pulsed, pounded, reverberated through to the soles of his feet, vibrating in his chest, ricocheting off the walls, across the ceiling, through the thick heat of the beating crowd. Lights warped and twisted, distorting images and faces. Colors that danced and exploded with each smash of metal to the fast-paced, exhilarating song. His very fingertips were tingling in awareness of the pure passion consuming each victim of the song. Their bodies moved in spasmodic and unpredictable rhythm, jerking and convulsing as if they no longer possessed control of their limbs. Glowsticks and neon attire created a massive psychedelic body of wate

you're beautiful like second hand smoke and fire - even when you're gone you leave behind embers and ashes ashes - you never did fall you warm my skin with that know-it-all smile saying - baby baby i'm already high your lips are always curved a little leer - laughing at a joke no one has even heard but me - twinkle twinkle little star and then we're dancing to no one's beat because we're no one laughing - like we do when we're exhausted and possibly hurt i catch them all in my open mouth - they taste like rain and salt water taffy the cotton candy kind - on sticky summer afternoons you're beautiful like fifty

you sang tenor, but spoke with a voice like high tide and raking. you wrote poems, and they were short and true like origami cranes. "good luck," you coughed, and only half meant it. i was imperfect, with piano hands and a bitter laugh. i was a bird, but i couldn't fly and wasn't free. "break a leg," i retorted, with all my almost heart. you were vague so that, when we counted each paper angel, we could look back and say "i know it was the truth." but it still hurts, somedays. when i think that you forgot. "we didn't win," you murmured. because folding one thousand was never enough.

he was broken and beautiful, like old sidewalks and white chalk. his beaten jansport backpack smelled of cigarettes and graphite. sometimes when he walked home, he'd gather memories in beige and tan and brown leaves - crumpled, torn, crunching beneath his feet. never fire because the fall was meant for dead things. he used to sing me songs at night. not from the lawn up to my bedroom window, but with me beneath iron stars that sometimes crashed - if we stayed out long enough to see. "because heaven kicks you out, eventually," he said, his words thick with slate and fall and trigonometry homework. i liked him because he never sm

he always said he liked owning things blew money on old films and black wishes. "i don't have wings," he croaked, and dropped ten feet down and six feet under. i held my breath to hear the splash. no amount of broken breaths were enough to fix that smile. he only bled blue in constant knots and shivers. "that's enough!" he screamed, and the stone consumed each sound wave. before i left the tables turned and he had hope slip down his cheek. "thirty silver coins," he whispered, voice hoarse like rain and gravel. he threw each one at my feet, but it never meant forgiveness.

"i really can't stay." you said, that night the ice cracked like glass beneath your nike's. i should have said something witty, like the glitter in that envelope or sunday, when you sang john 3:16. now it's 12:00 monday and i'm gulping down black coffee choking on judges like she's me and that's my body. my lungs won't even make it to your doorstep. "okay." you said, with casual detachment, your glass half full and eyes like winter. because you know mockingbirds. "they sing until their vocal chords snap." some days the pavement's black and i think i'll miss you, like friday evenings and hallmark cards. buts it's always t

he hurts like smokers lungs and the morning after when the only thing that doesn't ache doesn't matter, anyway. last night the sky never quite turned black, only a dull red and charcoal. even in the emptiest of alleyways the silence wasn't unnerving because rotting fire escapes and a city of sins weren't worth fighting for, in the end. they told him he was giving up. said, "wishing on stars is a cowards way out." he didn't mind much, so long as he had a good pair of shoes clothes on his back and hope in his chest, where it usually collapsed and curled, a match to thin paper each marlboro eating at his organs. rolling over in bed

i only passed one test in biology on veins and valves and voices, realized matthew 27:4 was carved on my intestines. "callous," you snarled, and smashed down through my arteries. i wanted to tell it as a story, pretend to be an engineer and spread the sweet disease. because your bones made me sick and i could only sneer, "pitiful." every three moments i checked my pulse just to be sure i was dreaming. it was always alright on the other side of town when cat scratches ensured we were stable. "since when did it matter," which wasn't a question, with concave ribs and convex veins. biology taught me to separate my hea