white and drooping,

a lonely tree too heavy for good too lost for worse for better for covered in a christmas sweater of love and lights too stagnant too stuck,

the snow anchors it to the earth, where it falls on blankets, moss, ache, grass clippings, ingenue, tissue boxes. raspberry wine, candy canes, Jupiter.

this is the leftmost diamond on the idol, the worst-case scenario,
the bad king wenceslaus stratagem,

the moth the light forgot to forget.

we are separated by buggerall, 
locked into didactic cells,
sand palaces with one loose grain.
i am building a graphite tomb to inter my brain when it gives up.
i don’t want to give up.

i will never be beautiful. i will never be good, but
i don’t want to give up hope that one day 
i’ll see the rope burns break and new skin will form

all will be warm milk and honey on the riverbeds.
we were never meant to live forever,
we were never meant to live forever.

we are spirits locked to each other by the bike chains in our hearts,
whipping through time like nothing else matters but calculators clicking,
trying to figure out why one is two.

i’ll find a notebook at the bottom of a coat pocket
and remember being, beginning again,
terrified of the worlds that claimed my soul, the towers:
the way they spiraled, wove their histories together, 
desperation splattered across the brick.

his face was a ruined wedding,
as if the abandon had hardened his veins,
and it was the last one that did it,
a hemophilia, royalty liquified, and
there was blood in his mouth,
and murder in his eyes.
he said something. i don’t remember what, but
benches splintered, his magnum opus a salty uppercut.
i pried my wishes from between the floorboards.

we are always the streetlamp glistening,
the abundance of mist off the pavement,
seven eyes blinking through the smoke.

i will never be beautiful. i will never be good, but
i don’t want to give up hope that one day 
i’ll see the rope burns break and new skin will form

all will be warm milk and honey on the riverbeds.
we were never meant to live forever,
we were never meant to live forever.

we are spirits locked to each other by the bike chains in our hearts,
whipping through time like nothing else matters
trying to find why one is two,
still searching for the answer.

and in that one moment,

we were more all at once, splattered against the concrete

like ghosts without sheets and cops without robbers,

edifices of spirit limitless,
churning against the confines of the skinbag, oldest antichrist,
shifting legendary directions, bears, snakes, soldiers,
worlds becoming worlds for the first time.


but it wasn't ever an ascension, i never knew what the earth had named itself.

everyone is a captain aboard a stone ship,
and we will all go down.
we will all go down.

we will never be beautiful. we will never be good, but

i don’t want to give up hope that one day 
the rope burns break and new skin will form,
all will be warm milk and honey on the riverbeds.

we were never meant to live forever,

we were never meant to live forever,
we were never meant to live forever.

we are spirits locked to each other by the bike chains in our hearts,
whipping through time like nothing else matters but clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking-

i want to be constellations but all i can do is hop stars.

i build universes by swirling fingers across the surface of the dream.
i am not ready to live in one that exists.
never have been ready.

(get ready.)