For better or for liverwurst

Summer is a cock-tease
She wants me on all fours
Bound in leather
But she won’t deliver
Won’t deliver
I sit down because I can’t get up
Moving your bones
Is like plate tectonics
Some won’t shift without breaking
I think about you more than
What is healthy and normal
For one human to think of another
You are an extension of my limbs
If I move too fast you might break off entirely
Become the Asia to my North America
Too far
Or worse
Impossible to get to

In the other room I thought I heard you say
“okay”
But nothing’s okay
We aren’t meant to be autonomous
Your skin should have been stapled to mine at birth
I think you are too fucking far away and no car can take me there
And none of the lights guide us home
You don’t burn out like an electric lamp
Instead you start an exquisite fire in the
Coldest depths of my cerebral cortex
That is all I know
The doors shut at five and they don’t open back up until 9 am
In the fake light of our perfect life
I have learned to make exceptions
I’ve got back taxes
And you wear a frown the color of the deepest bruise
A hurt that stains the counters and spills onto my shoes
You are toxic and I am rubbing the poison off with
An immaculate white glove

help-I'm alive- my heart keeps beating like a hammer

Almost three years sober
And I am still learning
How to keep my head above water
To feel the spark I felt after my first sip
Of Jack Daniels, the rush I know,
If I drank enough I would spin
Like the skirt of a Flamenco dancer
But I could keep from falling down
If I knew just the right amount,
Just the right recipe for success
The spark in his eye, seeing me
When I felt like no one
Made me feel like something

Self-esteem and loveless dancing
Tragedy and the art of deception
Are all man-made words,
I pull the threads out and unravel
The sweater of my life
All the pink threads that were supposed to lead
Me somewhere
I am fragile and these red lines on maps
Give me panic attacks
If I could go wherever I wanted
I’d never come back
But uncertainty makes me nauseous
And still I don’t want to know what
Is true
I believe in your skin like tissue
All the femurs and fissures beneath
All seem make-believe
But I wanted to see them
To know if you were real

You are electric but still falling apart
The stuffing falling from your ears
I try to push it back in.
I am lost and confused
All the ledges seem daunting
Every night comes without warning
My skin is tracing paper
My eyes are wet
You don’t know how to read the maps
In my skin
The quiet sighs I make when I am sleeping
You don’t know how to solve
The algebra in my face
The lipstick marks on the cups
Can stay
I am pacing in slow motion around our apartment
It took only a few hours to watch everything
Decompose
If I were prettier
If I had more degrees
If I could look you in the eye
Like a viper, ready
To attack at any moment
How would you react?
I have no tact but you consume
Me and suspend me into belief.