emily (2008)

We breathe thunderstorms- I inhale the vast eternity beyond your neck and collapse in the unshifting repose of youth, veins twitching like a starved hummingbird.

I am still.

We breathe thunderstorms and every unclean word we share bends but never breaks the canyon walls where wolves feed upon their prey and waste away alone.

Disappear completely.

We breathe thunderstorms until our gaping mouths twist ugly and unfamiliar leaving us stranded on the last word of this eulogy: goodbye. Goodbye blue skies and goodbye me and to the fullness I felt when a torrential rain was nothing but a portrait of our parents.

Goodbye.

We breathe thunderstorms, stringing clouds along the ceiling like Christmas lights, only devastating and permanent. That unmistakable fierceness drips from your lips and hangs like apparitions in the staleness of our ever-dimming bedroom making our every word stick and drag along our skin...

Bleed until dead.