with wings outstretched

nineteen years ago i 
woke up 
from a warm dream about 
being loved for real. then 
air touched my lungs 
and it was all over. 

somewhere 
you were alive, somewhere 
in time before that 
your first synapses formed, 
sometime later 
we were running 

through the trees, branches 
tangling their brittle fingers 
in our best clothes. your 
name is everywhere i 
look and it is really 
such a beautiful name. 

it hides in clouds and cubes 
of ice and golden 
verandas, blue scarves 
that still smell like desert, 
long porches where we'd 
swing for a few hours 

and smoke. that rasp 
is in your voice, it 
tastes like purple honey. and 
when i talk about your 
eyes, there's always murmurs 
of crystalline ships that are 

veiled with ice storms, 
pale veins wired through satiny 
corpse flesh, the 
sapphire insides 
of a fish, cut open with blood 
so dark it matches the sky 

around midnight. you 
are in-between the avenues 
of cerulean and indigo, 
rain and rivers. i 
want to climb into your breathing 
and fall from it as if 

it were the face of a cliff i could 
brush with my knuckles 
on the way down. my hands 
are always bruised and my 
knees are always 
bleeding, and the other boys i 

stay around are 
starting to think i 
am some kind of slut. no, 
they have already made up their 
minds, piecing 
together the bruises he 

leaves on my neck and the way 
i don't care how fucked 
up my hair is and my tights 
are ripped and i turn down 
their plans a lot and i 
smell like chanel, weed, 

flowers, sex. they think i 
fall into the arms of 
two, four, six, eighteen people 
and i can't bring myself 
to do anything but 
laugh, confirming their 

suspicions. how could i not 
laugh. i wake up coughing 
blood in your pillows and i 
spend long nights 
scraping my 
knees and repeatedly 

kissing the incredibly intelligent 
and incredibly 
fucked up dear friend i've 
made just by virtue 
of sewing my puckering 
pink heart lining to his 

grey shadow, the flying one 
that tries always to escape 
to a place where he 
will always run to, 
where he 
will never grow up. he 

likes to suck in a breath 
and pretend he's 
elsewhere or 
perhaps not at all. i like 
to feel the cage of my bones 
rise and declare that i, 

too, am running away. 
i am so sorry.
cannot imagine losing 
what made you alive. but 
losing what keeps you alive is 
something different, 

and perhaps he 
can get it back. perhaps we 
all can. in this i 
have realised that all 
of my problems 
are caused by me. not 

god, 
not 
fate, not 
insurance companies, not 
psychologists 
and pills, 

not my mother, 
father,
stepfather, 
not my friends who've left, 
not even you. i 
am the only thing 

still here, knocking myself 
on my back. and 
in this way he and i 
are the same. he says he 
hates the term 
"life is what you make it," and i 

know it's because he 
feels that it is true and he 
just won't do anything 
to change it for himself. 
except leave. 
and so i will leave. and the trees, 

the grass, the sky, 
the warm dreams we 
had so long ago, of maybe 
being loved, they
leave like they were 
never there to begin with. 

he won't leave a scar. they fade 
and so do we, 
until there's nothing left, not 
even the words we 
could have said once, 
but never did