UNTITLED

i. there’s a cigarette stain blistered on the lampshade and i still remember the oil spill in your eyes. the sprouts of crooked teeth from your gums crooned and crystallized in my belly like syrup in a styrofoam cup while you’d ask about my favorite constellation. i’d stare at the muscles pulling at your back.

ii. it’s been three days since you left and i would still like to walk with you to the theater where your father first told you you were unlovable; where you started writing poetry to tuck into your socks and your mouth would twist into a desert plum as you watched Anthony Perkins stutter over syllables of owl taxidermy. the grease from behind your eyes had joined with your lips as if the two were business associates and  

iii. i’ll hold my stomach tight to keep the organs in, almost as if to sterilize them of you. i’d left halfway through the movie and now i can’t remember if your eyes curve up or down— if they were steel gray or gnashed hazelnut. i tell myself the musk of your cologne and the lipstick on your favorite mug of mine will fade, that my favorite constellation is Orion’s belt, and that the angel tattoo between your shoulder blades is blasphemy and i know i want nothing to do with you because your father is right and 

iv. your mother brought the handgun you shot yourself with to my apartment two days ago, tucked neatly in her waistband as if she were a cowboy. i noticed the metal smudged with ink as she spoke past me. i’ll take half a sandwich—yours—from the fridge, my fingertips unpeeling plastic wrap from stale bread with the reverence of one opening a casket. 

v. i gorge as if it were steeped in warm honey and rolled in sticky sweets; there’s a taste of tobacco on my tongue… and i’d like to imagine you’ve kissed me.