I don’t understand anything about love—
one day I’m faceless, sunken in solitude—
the next a rare smile, a reminder life
isn’t meant for dying.
I don’t understand why women are scared—
my eyes are porcelain balls.
my hair, a dusty cobweb.
I shame myself every night
before I flip the lights off
and darkness sits on my eyelids.
I have this monster that spins
the same obsession,
the same calm chaotic blend
of merciless clinging.
I try and squash it with darkness
but it spins dry rhetoric
like a restless wheel headed
toward hell. I don’t know how
to stop my clinginess.
I throw it in the dumpster
but it claws inside my mouth
and rests somewhere
in my diaphragm. the lights don’t help—
so I stay away from myself.
from women,
from the head tilts and glinted eyes,
from any form of affection.
I let cigarettes press their feet
across my teeth.
call the footprints
close enough to a woman’s patience—
her willingness to stay,
to say, yes, you are aflame,
but I won’t try and put you out.
I’ll bend the fire to your want-
I’ll allow you to love me.
but fire always kills
and cigarettes clog
and the earth recedes
into a black fog:
darkness that eats,
leaves silence curled in a ball.
there are strings of light waiting to burst
from my throat,
but they cling to everything.
they walk across my words,
relight my cigarettes,
stare out windows
when solitude crawls in
from the moon.
I’m always afraid of myself.
I can’t hide anything from quiet.
so I stare at ceilings
and let my absence speak-
because, my presence is too much
to be good enough.