There are still those nights,
lonely as a broken music box.
Where my arms
feel like a loose tooth
without you there.
I wish I knew magic,
and every rabbit I pulled out of my hat
brought you a step closer.
But I’m tired of
trying to hide cards up my sleeves.
Roll ‘em up
walk away
move on.
I’m trying, but I never should have
called the spot next to you home.
Just let me get my bearings.
I’m lost and
fumbling in the dark.
Give it time.
The soft shape of you in the bed
won’t be there in the morning
and soon, I’ll stop looking for it.
I’ll roll over.
Flip the pillow,
feel for the cold side
take a breath
and take a step.

It’s nights like this,
filled with too many cigarettes.
Marijuana made memories
and laughter build buildings that sang gospel. 
Lamp lit ceremonies hang
from the walls
and shit man,
we are great decorators.

I felt like my foot was caught in a bear trap,
somewhere between the sadness I bring home
to hang up like a heavy coat
and the wrinkled road maps with red ink routes
of where I want to go.
But you,
opened my front door,
picked the lock,
and kissed me with your moonrock lips so hard
that I finally knew what it was to stand in the middle of a meteor shower.
I wish my words weren’t so fucking clumsy.
They keep falling down.
I’m learning to walk again.
Bolt by bolt, you’re getting rid of my crutches.
Teach me to run like Hell.
Break my back so I can learn to stand up straight.
Make me fluent in
creaking floorboards,
rustling sheets,
and the sounds of breath escaping like a slow convict.
I don’t believe in God
but anyone with half a heartbeat can tell that this is holy.

What I tried to credit to luck

you held my tongue and told me,

it was a miracle we built.

Since then I’ve been reading

architecture books in braille

so my hands can know where to start,

how to lay the bricks in our foundation.

But with every page my fingers see,

I can feel the ache in our miracle knowing that

all I want to do is go home.

Ever since I cut open my ribcage with the letters you wrote me

so I could point to my heart and say,

“I found a place for you to live.

Move in, make yourself comfortable…

stay as long as you like.”

I looked down to find a welcome mat

in from of the open door in your chest.

We decorated our walls with

Van Gogh brush strokes,

airport embraces,

and the sound of jigsaw hips falling into place.

I looked over at you to catch the full dose of your silent smile.

Side effect may include:

jello knees,

runaway hearts,

and a double-kick-drum pulse.

Recommended dosage: 

Daily.

“Yes?” I asked.

You nodded.

So I put down my roots and pulled up the past

like old carpet.

I don’t have a green thumb

to make us grow from nothing,

but I’ve got two hands

and I want to build skyscrapers.

moqueur:

I knew a long time before the sun went down that it was going to set.
In the same way I knew when it was time
for the San Andreas Fault scar tissue of my core to break out the hard hats and radios for the tremors and shivers and tumults and aftershocks of my own cleansing, and I knew it was the tectonic shifting of your atriums and ventricles that would shake my world and crucify the faith I put your smile,
and I knew the debris would get caught in my tires when I tried in futility to make my getaway quick, despite my heaviest lead foot and sappiest road rage.
But once you’ve loved someone like I loved you these little pieces never seem to dislodge from the tires that mark all the places I decide to go without looking back to see your dent in my tire tracks, like carbon dating my own life back to before my heart was fossilized in the sap of reciprocation and given to the museum of your rib cage for safe keeping. 
In spite of myself I held the soft pedal down to try and make you linger a little longer, knowing that at some point every sound wave eventually diminishes into nothing and there would be nothing left. I left my finger on the key hoping the feel of my hand would remind you that I was the one to strike your chords in the silence and I knew no other song.
I could feel the rising croak of my very rough pedal crawling- heaving up my throat out of the entropy of the Fault as it said, “You took physics; matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Don’t we matter?” It said, “Honey, imperfection is a science. God is in all of us. What are you looking for?” It said, “It doesn’t matter.”
It said, “I forgive you.”
And I do, because that’s what my San Andreas Fault would want, and will want once I give it a Jurassic Park jumper cable kick start. 
The inevitability of all of these things was tangible, much like the haze of the aftershock, and the tremors in my gut, and the violin I ate for the paleontologists who will scrape the dirt away from my crises when the soft pedal tone dies away.
I knew all of these things. 
I also knew hours before the sun came up that it would rise. 
 

by Moqueur

There are still those nights,
lonely as a broken music box.
Where my arms
feel like a loose tooth
without you there.
I wish I knew magic,
and every rabbit I pulled out of my hat
brought you a step closer.
But I’m tired of
trying to hide cards up my sleeves.
Roll ‘em up
walk away
move on.
I’m trying, but I never should have
called the spot next to you home.
Just let me get my bearings.
I’m lost and
fumbling in the dark.
Give it time.
The soft shape of you in the bed
won’t be there in the morning
and soon, I’ll stop looking for it.
I’ll roll over.
Flip the pillow,
feel for the cold side
take a breath
and take a step.