lonelythimble

[lonelythimble]

here's what you need to build the summoning circle

to drag me back in from the depths

i leave for a while, i'll return when i see the lights on in the window again

seeing the warm glow of you waiting for me

dab at my eyes with a wet cloth

wrap my head in canopy synthetics

whisper "go back to your daydream";

take my hand, come with me

tell me about the broken mirrors of your eyes

like they're a bedtime story

bundle me in your sheets

let me see you in the light of the sunset

make a painting soft enough for me to step my scared feet down onto

cushion my soles, lend me a hand, catch me if i trip

i'll beg you to forgive me

run my head under the water

to feel your fingers running through my scalp

brush my teeth and rinse my mouth

sit me in the wardrobe

give me your motion to mimic

walk with me in the autumn air

watch me kneel and smell the grass

paint my chest into something soft enough to pull apart with your hands

and climb into

i wave to you and push out into the water

"i cannot stay for this part";

throw you a rope

please pull me back when you miss me

follow the instructions i left

hold my hand and say wake up to me

[lonelythimble]

to hold love in ones lungs

makes it grow roots there -

spores flowering into buds,

blooming more at every breath

of you, of the air of this earth

you are alive on.

i hold my breath around you,

lest you catch the escaping

perpetrating scent of petals

when you make me laugh

and i shed like a shaking blossom;

i tongue back pollen

sweet and sticky in my throat,

lest it scratch like sickness

in yours.

i wonder if

with each regrowth,

the leaves, too, are taught

another way to fall

in love with the sun

and know that to hold the love

in ones own hands and leaves

and have it belong to oneself

lets it leak like sunlight into life,

upturning the wilted willow

and coaxing back her soil,

that her roots may sink violently

like claws into this earth,

take up life

and exhale warm air.

[lonelythimble]

long after

his language is gone

he speaks in fragments

of a man

"i walk two miles a day

to see my mother"

when all else is forgotten

only love remains

in these hopeful prayers

for our joy

"any offers";

"somebody has already decided

you will never have to be alone

these pious declarations

congratulations, congratulations, congratulations

in sweet triplets,

billah billah billah

age fades his tired resignation

and bleak obsession with death

to a cheekiness,

peppering repeated jokes like mantras to lightness

"from the land of the giants"

and a chuckle full of heart

wheezing exclamations of a joy so vast and pure

with wet eyes that could know nothing else but laughter

he speaks in rhythmic rules

handing down meaningless wisdoms

suggestions of another time

"he has no choice

he has to grow his mustache

the girl will say

i will not marry you

you have no mustache

i will let you grow a mustache"

he lives in wonderous truths

in times unknown to us

while i am here

watching the autumn light creeping in,

casting white hair into

wisps of angels

painting old skin soft and lively

lost in the poetry of it;

to be sat in a room

with the same faces,

recycled

the same antics

gathered in cacophony

fussing restlessly in love

this dance of

parent, child

parent, child

of shaking laughter

and musical chairs

[lonelythimble]

i untie my snakeskin noose,

and face the time told

in the sand.

i release the pieces

of myself, and see

the red raw of my hand.

the ropeburn stings the sweetest song

of times ive lost,

and grasp to know.

i cling to what i must let go:

early mornings,

the smell of iron.

[lonelythimble]

all the days after were dust too, as it turned out.

and what else would they be?

how could anything compare to this?

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎⠀

a love like mother's milk,

so long a story that you and i

are inseparable in history and in heart. my soul is embroidered with yours as stars on the night sky.

half of me is all the ways you complete me, all the things i love in you, all the things you loved in me, taught me.

my movements reflect yours; your speech, mine. we are our own language. this is a home we have built.

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

the last thing you taught me

is that love is being known and knowing.

teaching is itself the very act of loving.

love is how you know my strings and frets and keys as well as any instrument,

every button to press to make my heart open, my smile, my laugh bloom to life.

to peel me open in sweet ascension

as comfortable and simple as anything.

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎⠀

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

you made the secrets of the universe feel

so easily understandable.

you slipped into me as thoughtlessly as sleep

and pressed our souls together

so i could feel the universe fall into focus,

like all of this made sense because you were there in my arms, and that was all there was to any of it.

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

i looked at you and saw childhood and sun,

like love, for you, was a reliving of every happy moment in my life all together at once

in a faded, but so familiar nostalgia.

for the difference in your shape

which made my heart wrap even tighter around the fabric of your being i could see so clearly, love so simply. like it was all i knew, all I'd ever done.

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

i pull until my fingernails bend backwards and bleed

at my stretching, clinging heart

which cannot let you go

as you are so deeply entwined into my core.

i undo my buttons numbly

and untie the knot in my scarf.

i lick away where your lips have touched mine for the last time.

the stitches are ripped out of my flesh, the skin stripped. this pain is searing and raw like nothing i knew i could ever feel.

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

there is no soft alcove of you in which to take refuge from the raining gunfire of this loss.

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

how can i sleep, my love? the memory of your broken voice

makes my lungs unworthy of air.

i am grateful for the light i had seen in the world

but have never been so lost in the darkness

at the end of our dance.

[lonelythimble]

i count this as my first kiss, though

i am well acquainted

with your lips.

every day with you is

another lesson

in gentility; in what "enough" means.

i love you as i have loved to learn, and it is

a young thing. an innocent feeling

as soft and susceptible as i was, unwounded.

you teach me to be tender and permeable and unafraid

in the gaps where i cannot bear the weight alone

of building myself back up to be whole again.

i hide in the space between your breaths

and weep myself clean of ancient sorrows.

you teach me what "home" means. what "safety" is.

i thaw in your warmth to unfurl from my frozen fetus.

i grow in your gentle watering which does not drown

as others' has. there is such love in your hands

as to make this better now where the

chasms of the past cannot be filled

so i will not ask it of you. only, "stay, as long

as you wish to." i kiss your palms to thank

the balance, the health in your love.

[lonelythimble]

i am sinking again, and it is alright.

you do not need to pull me out of the water,

you need only to stroke my face

as my head goes under,

and i will keep myself afloat.

and if you are sinking too, then only

hold your breath against my mouth

and stay buoyant,

and we can hold onto one another

as the stream moves forward.

[lonelythimble]

my tommy my tommy you're my jschlatt say it to me - ur latest muse

i am so so completely in love with you

[lonelythimble]

you say, one day,

while every inch of you

is draped across me,

"tell me your love language

is touch without telling me

your love language is touch,"

and it is the closest

we have come to the thing

we have been teetering around.

i have thought about

all the ways i could say it to you:

how i missed my chance

that friday, backlit,

sunset over the field

where we lay entwined;

you draped over me and

spilling affections like

profanity, me kissing them

back onto your lips.

in a way, i have already said it

without my mouth ever

needing to form the words.

i have kissed it into your skin

and whispered it woven,

embroidered into sweet nothings;

i have tapped it in morse

into the soft skin of your back

and spelled the letters out

stroking your face;

i have threaded it through

the strands of your hair

with my carding fingertips.

when you kiss me

you speak it against my mouth.

it is as simple as the kiss

pressed to the back of my neck

as you come up from behind

to embrace me;

it is as simple as

the peck on the cheek

to say "goodbye,"

and the unspoken

that is spoken:

you have said it

a thousand times,

and i a thousand more,

and yet my mouth remains

gaping as a fish for air,

even though I know

exactly the words i wish to speak—

even though you know already

what i will say.

i scream it to the universe

and the words leave me

like light. so weightlessly

they pull my body

from the ground.

but when you are before me

i cannot muster a whisper.

our mouths have danced

a million dances

but you paralyse my lips now.

the words sit heavier than

the love i hold for you

on my tongue, and i can only

kiss you to let them be spoken.

(so kiss me, angel,

and i will let you know

you're loved)

[lonelythimble]

maybe it is bad for me to love.

a bulbous heart too big for my body

swells gaseous, so throbbing and heavy.

my spine coils up to capture it, but it

bursts from my ribcage to impale itself

on the very bones it breaks.

i love as frantically as my mother.

drench every second, fill the gaps between the words

to build the barricades & never slow my sprint

to feel you there, pressing into every edge of me.

selfish sweet, whisper "stay stay stay stay."

i love with the intensity of my mother;

all of me alight and screaming silent,

blood bottled away and piling under the rug

to make your mattress.

i am bloodshot and unclosing;

i sleep with my eyes open lest you leave in the night,

but you make no move to run.

muscle memory.

would you run your fingers over my corpse face

and put my paper lids to rest?

[lonelythimble]

there are spiders in my mouth,

needle pincers pulling webs

like threads, sewing my lips

sealed, silent,

hoarding words like butterflies

under my tongue.

i go to say "good morning,"

or some heartful obscenity

like "i am thinking of you fondly,"

and choke on silver string.

blooming wings scrape the sides

of my cocoon throat.

[lonelythimble]

i am forsaken by slumber. dreamless,

restless. there is no room for unconsciousness.

how can i sleep? tell me, my love.

when here we have lain and here we have sung

and touched and touched. how can i

crawl back into these sheets and not

feel you press into me again? how can i

place my fingertips on the frets of this guitar

without holding your phantom hands

over the strings that played your tune?

sing it once more for me. do it all over,

just the same. rewind the tape so i can

feel it again. once more. and again after that.

please, so i can breathe. to keep this

heart of yarn from unfurling further.

i let the memory lull me to sleep

and tomorrow, i will leave my laces untied

and look you in your lovely eyes and i will not take

your lips in mine, i will not pull you flush

against me, nor fill the spaces between your

fingers with mine; i will not brush the hair

from your face and I will not say

"i love you,"

or "i have been drinking from the glass of water

you left on my bedside table;" i will tell you

"no, the spectre of your lips does not haunt

my mouth," i will tell you i am not craving you

like a starving fool, i will wash the scent

of your clothes off my body so you do not know

that i have spent the last eight days

marinating in the residue of you on my sheets,

and when you say, "it has only been eight days,"

i will not say "are you counting them (too?)"

or "will you teach me how?" for the days

between are dust, and innumerable.

[lonelythimble]

the oldest pianos were made of ivory.

though my bone is not nearly so thick

as that of the old giants,

i will peel back my skin

trying to find myself under the weight of it all.

then, will you hold my hand,

piano player? will you rest your nimble fingers

over my sorry skeleton?

[lonelythimble]

[lonelythimble]

here. i have learned to be fragile,

once more, sensitive, once more

by stripping back my scales

to the tender flesh beneath.

so come, sweet, into my chest;

slip into sleep under the embrace of my ribs

and let the tapping rain of my full, beating heart

lull you softly down.

i will cradle your crown

and trace my broken fingers

over the silken landscape of you.

[lonelythimble]

by the last flecks of a summer fire

i read words written by a younger hand:

stronger. a little less mild; a little less

droopy than these ones. her words

are flames, their images vibrant,

and i wish to submerge myself in the

profanity of all that she holds in those thoughts.

what would you see in me? you long-locked

brazen beauty? do you envy the pain

pouring out of my pores, you carcass?

i shout it until my throat is hoarse,

begging that you will hear me from

all the way back then. hold on to that

awful thing you are. plant your feet

in your rancid shit and keep spouting

your hatred. to ache is lovelier than

to burn, but everything you became

is wilted and mellow, and no one but you

likes a dying flower. so keep on

sucking the life out of that soil and

let your blooming petals shroud the

lowly grass in shadow, for

only the flower can give

its nectar unto the bees.

[lonelythimble]

re:love

love is late night

when you are soft and pliable

and i press my forehead to yours

and feel how small your skull is

against mine, how fragile,

your bones on my bones, your

fur on my skin, and i press

my lips to your head

tenderly,

as though i might break you

accidentally.