I am convinced

there is no fire
there is no ice
no hard fall's bruise
no slick blade's slice
no heat of sun
no guilt from vice

that burns like you do
in my mind.

Renewal.

I don't know all that much about God, but I like to think he lives behind the peak of the mountain outside my window, where the feathery rainclouds cast shadows on the rock, and I can't really tell where the sky meets the earth.

I am suspended in mid-air, the weathered walls of my room dangling on a thread, a thread stretched so thin I never really know when it's going to break. Or if it will at all.

When it rains here, this rapidly moving city sits still for a little while. The tiny cars below move a little slower, the voices outside are quieter. The air is thick with some sort of silent contemplation.
Hungover, listless people stretch out of bed and toss out empty bottles in time for the Sabbath, repenting a week's worth of sin.

Cleansing, washing, purging.
We wipe the rust from our wheels, the sleep from our eyes, the dust from our books.

Here, there is no amount of decadence the rain can't rinse away.

Waiting like the dawn

There's really no need to speak in riddles. But that's all anything feels like these days.
Penciled-in plans constructed on brittle foundations.

I feel you in my sleep, corporeal, palpable. Hair like the silk dress I left at home.
I awaken as brutally as I fall asleep.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Absence makes the heart forgetful.
Only time will really tell.
For now, there are strokes to glue a crumbling wall. Hundreds of strokes for hundreds of characters, hundreds of miles, hundreds of days.

Then perhaps in hundreds of days, we'll be able exchange uncertainty for beauty, pain for complacency, tumult for peace. And single-digit hours won't drive us to madness, delusions of our melting skin reaching tendrils into each other's subconscious.



But right now, I'd give a finger for your hand on my cheek
to dry the saline on this sunburnt visage,

bright sun on a moonlight face.