Why tell someone the nightmares where they harmed you? 

Blonde eyelash, morning dark with rain, every moment of lostness

was the finding. On the living room couch, fingers locked 

inside my body, you asked Did you miss this? Blue pyromania 

of your stare carving a shrine in me by kaleidoscope.

How whales feel weightless all their lives, I watched

from the bedroom your slim silhouette in the shower

like someone struggling through snow. My ass cheek craved 

its bitemark. In my old bedroom, buoyant third floor

gloom, your mouth like hot wax sealing an envelope 

of secret royal matter. You like to lean back and observe

my heathen glossolalia, scratching and pulling your hair 

like I need something from you. I need something from you. 

You know I missed this, and long before I saw its outline

black against the guessing newborn sky. 

I used to bike through the thrown knives of city lights 

after work, drunk, nostrils gritty with stardust as every 

possible death honked its horn, swerved around. Skullfucked 

by the noise in my headphones, daring violence, glowing yellow 

face of the bell tower clock was a nauseous second moon 

its hands like scissors cutting expensive bolts of time

wrapped neatly, delivered to oblivion. I was numb not brave. 

We were blind asteroids barreling toward each other 

across the ghostly pink nebula of childhood

through the dark eons slept on the bathroom floor 

my soul, unconscious and churning, expelled a prayer 

that was more like a gasp, like a trapped animal 

vocalizing loneliness, I had no word yet for this:

cove of your jaw, neck, collarbone, that sacred constellation. 

May I mourn the present? I miss you even as I look at you,

as my hair swirls over your chest in the night like ivy

climbing a castle wall. Our favorite drinking game: 

the ten of cups turned over. Stars firing, irises opening 

chrysanthemum boy, what do I look like when I’m gone?