StorytimeCircle

"how much do you love me?" "i love you more than the stars, more than the sand, more than the water of a man quenched, parched from desert storms drenched in the sweat of one thousand egyptian slaves— i'm a slave to your heart, and i love you more than i love dreams and watching falling leaves on a fall evening, we're a team and i love you more than i love my mother, i love you more than any other i had ever waited for, that's how much i love you." "how much do you love me?" "i love you more than life itself, of course, i love you like the sun loves its planets, or how the planets follow the sun wherever she goes. i love you more than

is this a love letter or a suicide note? when you constantly cradle midnight stars in your mind like flickers of hope against the great black window (space) are you dabbling in insomnia or are your fears too loud to buzz out the white noise if the ocean is made out of sea salt then when you can’t crumple the sobs in your lungs anymore then just lay down and close your eyes and imagine the waves rolling over your skin drowning you until you can’t see the blurry faces anymore they tell you that when your fingers shake and tear at the base of your palm trying to make blood pool somewhere anywhere to take a marker and make art on

You are my bone structure— The cartographer of my vertebrae; One, Two, Three, Four, Your fingers walk the trail of veins leading to my entropic heart. When I found you, you only knew of desert heat, The cool liquidity of hot metal burning down your throat. I am chattering teeth and blue skin, I pressed myself against your chameleon body and Breathed life into you like the way you wrapped around my Mousy fingers and held my hand when my skull was Collapsing into itself. Your hands smooth wings into my shoulder blades and Weave gold into the strands of my chocolate hair. You bring me earth so that one day I may be able To stand upon i

the first thing you have to learn is how if you pull and mold your nose with your fingers, it will shape the cartilage in slopes and thin streams to allow the slimy species of  scaly fish to reproduce and (meiosis) in the paper thin skin that separates a chapter from a novel people do not smell like roses when they wake up and they don’t keep their fingernails clipped the way you do - instead they wake up with the leftover taste of rum rolling around in their mouth, forgetting that they called you at three in the morning to wonder why you never kissed them back that one time, and how you got out of that ticket when a cop pulled you ove

The closet is dusty and dark. It smells of old wood. Your tiny, bare legs are pressed against the cloth of my uniform, but I can still feel the heat that you emit. The only thing I can see in the shadows is the edge of your jaw line, the faint color of your skin. I ask God to let me touch you one more time, but my limbs feel too heavy to move. Our breathing is synchronized. “I wanted to be a doctor.” “Hush,” I tell you. Your small hand finds mine in the dark. “I wanted to help people. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” The laugh that comes out of your mouth is heavy and self-deprecating. Your seam

birth. track 7 - kin. you are water. things move through you like osmosis; you give them life and they take yours. you do not know how, sometimes, to pick yourself back up again, but you do it anyway because you are self-sufficient, self-winning, self-fulfilling. she looks just like you. that baby girl by your side who ought to be the child you hold in your arms after birth because you labored for her. you saved her life. but who the fuck is you? knowledge is hard to comprehend when no one else knows it. no one knows you like you know you. they say you can’t love someone until you learn to love yourself but the problem is that you d

It was a sticky summer night.  She smelled like chlorine that floated in her hair and she wore only a bathing suit bottom that tied in strings around her hips and a flannel shirt in a pattern of blue and red, unbuttoned, only barely hiding her breasts. I considered her like a balloon.  She would swell and swell and swell and she would pop!  Pop.  Her pieces would scatter around my floor like newspaper stories, sputtering vomit and rumors of disgust and self-hatred.  The skin around her eyes were always swollen with bruises, veins broken from hypersleep, a statis.  She was homeostasis.  Or maybe I was hers.  Like a bad relationship, and we he

What is truth? If you think about it, fact is still just opinion. The truth is something that man has made, That humans have told and labeled As right. If we were all that powerful, We could march straight up into heaven And kill God.  We could be God. But humans are monsters. We are all just muscle tissue and bones Inside bags made of flesh. Are souls true? What does it mean to be true, anyway? The truth is what we have made it. So what is the truth? Is it true that I am living? Is it true that we are awake and alive At this very moment, Breathing in with every thump our heart makes In our chest? Or are we all just dead, Feet planted like s