At night,
there is nothing to give
                            or trade
                           or barter.
I figure that
the best I can do is
just tell you that
I love you,
                 and hope that it's enough.

I can tell by the way
your back is turned
                that it's not.








                                                                                              (But for now it's all that I've got).

my lips, your lips, apocalypse.

I took the dislocated and the frazzled pieces,
the parts of a larger and more elegant design
than you or I.
I assembled a space;
I created the shared nothing.

And the abandoned and shattered
and remaining pieces
grew to surround us and become us
and the nothingness inside grew too.

We struggled to fill it,
then we were crowded.
And the fragile occupants
 and entities were swallowed
by the nothingness.

Fractured walls caved,
until only the ideas remained.
Frightened, you joined the wind.
You left me alone to rebuild.

I listen to the ghosts,
and I'll do anything they say.

Don't you ever say 
you're not afraid that
one day your body will
collapse onto the asphalt,
writhing under the magnificent
weight of suppressed anxiety,
until every thought you've
ever had evaporates.

You know
                that I know

you're terrified.

My love, I know that in
the dead of the dark you 
are looking for an answer
to a question you do not
know, and though it's etched
on your chest and under your
fingernails and behind your eyelids,
you can't keep still long enough
to see just what it says.

You look at me, and see nothing 
but burgundy on white and you say 
that there's no more to me than this,
you can do nothing but kiss my eyes 
closed until I'm no longer present.

Our descent begins quietly, with whispers
and hushed voices and the street noises
that rush into the room as soon
as they're permitted; they fit well with the 
jostling of limbs and the tossing and turning
of our bodies in the sheets defeating any purpose
of keeping our mouths shut.

My mind is made up, but I'm in no position 
for giving up or forgetting what is at stake,
for the sake of myself, I hold my breath
and my tongue until the world becomes just
the sum of each action and my body is numb.