someday we’ll run away
to a little house on the edge of the forest and we’ll wake up to warm light from the curtains
and you’ll drink your coffee and i’ll make toast
and we’ll sit in the garden together and everything will be alright
someday i’ll be happy
though i can’t see what that looks like
intangible, abstract, a blank white emptiness
and i am spilling ink across it carelessly
doodling in the margins and scrawling in ugly handwriting
a monkey clacking away at a typewriter
aimlessly
i hold a bubble in my hands
try to grip it, find something solid
but it spills over the edge and falls apart
water through my fingers
the horizon stretches out so vast and beautiful
so ugly and messy and distorted
entangled in a burning spiderweb
and i am tiny and curled into a ball
i’m not ready
i can’t do this
once i was happy
a dreamlike embryo, drowned in layers of memories
spring and summer half-recalled
now i am here and the wind is blowing and the earth crumbles around me
i follow the gravity of the stars
dancing along their path, tracing constellations of a future foretold
i’ve held out for this long but i am waiting, teetering on the edge
any moment now i’ll lose footing
cross the event horizon
it’ll all be too much and i’ll fall
but for now i rest by the light of the hearth with your fingers intertwined in mine
breathe in, breathe out. everything will be alright.
and i float, eyes closed
maybe someday i’ll open them.

i want to eat soap
let the bitter alkaline taste sink into the back of my mouth
cold and clean
i want to burn like sage
i want to drown in sweet sticky cough medicine
to take an eraser to my mind
my lungs are full of carbon dioxide
my bones are made of plastic and my eyes are made of pixels
it is not a glorious or beautiful death
if only i could be swept up by the ocean
or tangled up in roots and devoured by moss and mushrooms
struck by an falling star that splits the earth in two
or consumed by fire erupting from the ground
then my story could be sung to a tragic melody
but instead i am dirty and polluted
corrupted
i scrub and i scrub, i stand beneath a waterfall
but this can’t be washed away
maybe it just needs some soap

the moon floats aimlessly, bobbing on the surface of the sea
my ears are clogged with water and i am heavy
solid stone and yet hollow
a cold windy day, i step out into the sunlight
i close my eyes in the sudden warmth
an embrace
the sun is most beautiful when she’s rising & setting
but she always returns to warm the sky again
we are small.
we are spinning in an endless expanse
we are the rare moment when paths cross
and two circles perfectly align in the sky
an embrace
her voice is the sound of the dawn spilling over the ocean
her hand in mine, we’ll face the dark together
rain and wind tear through the night
but the sun is right here next to me
we are sheltered from the storm
and soft, i stay
entwined in the golden aurora
an embrace