it's one a.m. ( feels like )
but the clock took a hit today and
it's barely brushed past seven
it's been too/not long since
i've laid on your voice
like a fire at my feet and ice at my ankles
like diamond wishing dust in my ears and poison spitting from my mouth
you're not curled up in sleep between my teeth, or
sucking my pink tongue over your head like a blanket
safe, too familiar.

you're not the buzz in my day,
i never touch the numbers in your order
but i think them a little too often on the keyboard of my brain.
you are not any sort of vibration except
on my fingers in the moments i
forget to forget
you are just a number
a time, place, an anything
but a here and now.

so eject from my passenger seat
( remember the time...?
my insides turned insideout and my face gasping in grass
blades in my ears and fingers clutching
at a ragged driveway and tearing my hands into pieces of you
into nothing useful, scrapes in lines like you used to sculpt when we'd crawl
in heated old moments when movies were in color
bleeding on the back of your shirt and listening to your heart beat backwards
you didn't notice the streak til cursing in the laundry room
detergent dust on yet another flat surface of
one of those many takeadvantageofaflatsurfaceletspleaselaydownletspleaselayovermeletsgeteachotherlaid
voices in downy white and moans in hot tomale-stained red
just put it in the machine and up the vibrations
everything will (always) be alright.
but in this grey-guilt life, i'm holding onto a grey -way
the way you'd hold my head (tight pull my head back so the moan drifts clear out the windsheild and down
the streets to girls in gutters dying for lovers like you)
just trying to get the world to stand still only long
enough for things to return to normal time
clocks matching heartbeats.
for you
to slip your fingers into gaping lacey holes
your hand on my hip, threaded into belt loops all because
i wasn't wearing one and the buttons were coming undone for you
but if the world isn't in color, darling, blackandwhitesex just doesn't feel right.

so i suicided across gravel and sunk my soul into the tar and tried as i might to
stick my heart there, but
you drove off in a flurry of lights
white, nothing colored up except your car, soft and flaming red,
you put my heart in the glove box and didn't look back
i did. i always did. i always do.

there was a message a minute when i tripped into the scuffed carpet universe
friends screaming my screen to chreds,
be anywhere. but. there.
anywhere and anyone but the red jeep passenger.
i saw it on the news,
the rubbers in the glove box and the rubber of the tires
they're heading straight into a brownbrickwall
eightysixmilesanhour and only speeding up.
i feel sick but i'm adrenaline addicted.
i don't look out the windsheild because i'm in denial because we can't be almost
dead.
running into the end and there's nothing further.
i watch your face in the review mirror ( reflections are in color )
memories are in color.
i'm not jumping out the window
even when you do
as long as that mirror doesn't break.
i'm holding on, i'm holding on,
to any strap of seatbelt, any glitter of memory lane glass, any strip of driveway
for the world to stop spinning and to keep you in your seat
don't walk. away.

you did and i fell into a carpeted universe and into the arms of a love
that never aches or bee stings or mosquito itches, werewolf bites or the worst of all
love bug bites.
and he fed me saltines until my mouth was dry, but there was nothing he could do about my
eyes.
"you are not sick because you drank too much" he's breathing vodka slurredblurredwords into
my half-hearing bleeding ears.
"you are sick because he puts poison in you and you let him bite"
i fell asleep and woke up light in the morning

at least until the next time we
opened up his trunk and made (dying) love between bumping subs and
buzzing amplifiers.