Secret Keeper

My muscles are coiled
The delicious tension warming the skin
You never knew you could make love to a space heater
Music from a red room bleeds and pools in green sheets
I twist greedily in the sound
Stretching and contracting
Targets are acquired and locked
With anticipation for ammunition
Bones scattered and obliterated
With every ragged scream
Melting from fingertips, licking through my hair like flames
The springs beneath the skin tremble in preparation
Soundtracks of restless breaths travel through my lungs
Between the silences
My chest rises and falls with every beat
Filled with your notes
Black floors soak sweat like a mattress
Vampires crowd in the yellow lights
We drink deeply and die

emptying the box

this is a postcard
this is dusk from a fire escape
this is a tracing of the lines on your palm and a promise that won't be kept
these are the naked epistles you wrote to her
this is the shadow of a hand dipped in flour, smudged across the front of my black apron
these are the pennies dropped from canyon cliffs
this is the magazine where you inscribed my blue name in the margins
this is the morning as it tilts over the hills
these are words you wrote to me, "blue eyed and distant" at the coffee shop table in the corner of your bookstore
these eyes are "sky or sea, bound or free..."
these are my eyes. they are green.