TheAfterWhys

I know now, that the muffled pressure in the dark space of your car was us screaming into the silence: I don't really know you, but I want to. I want to love you. We were so so wrong for each other. I know now, that the drip burn of candle wax on the back of my hand was you saying: It hurts. This not-quite-fitting-together, but wanting it so much. I know now, that the sound of your receding footsteps are louder than whispered cries of: Stay. Please. And I know why. I know why we were silent when we should have screamed. I know why we could never, would never, fit together. I know all of the whys, now. After.

Her hands are clasped around empty bottles, that sparkle in the sunshine they are pressed against cracked lips, bleeding, bleeding from the pressure. She can hear the muffled pitter-pat of rain against her eardrums and she closes her eyes, tight, against the desire to live. *

Buttons glittered delicately, finger-stepping their way up a rigid spine, whispering morse code to the brocade across her shoulders don't.give.up. while her chin rose proudly against words meant to unravel lace. Her shoes were dull against a gray sky, the soles thin, but the worn leather smelling softly of shoe polish and the memory of what it was like to shine. This morning they supported her as she stood tip-toe to kiss her husband goodbye and climbed just a few more steps to see one more sunrise. In a moment, they will be all the world sees, because they'll tell us more than we ever wanted to know Kicking, twitching, and fi

He collects slivers of time, glittering silver seconds and glossy flakes of golden minutes in the corner of his eye They are sunspots in his iris drops of shatterglass upon his tongue and the fireworks within his chest. His breathe is just a whisper, waiting, for their incandescence to catch fire and illuminate the night with their solar flare so that twilight, shadow, and ebony are too blind to cut anything.

My nerves are stretched taught across the space between us, their tendrils digging fraying fingertips desperately into our throats and praying for salvation from every swallow, every word, collapsing the delicate lungs within. you were a hint of yourself at first, a shimmer of dew-caught sun in my periphery. your name was only apparition, then, a vague, undefinable syllable in a ruined scripture, something lighter than dust - we are butterfly wings trembling in the hum behind a thunder-clap, china dolls at the knees of a tornado - We are the bowed wood of doomed windows and we are clinging, bereft, to hold the cracks at our hearts

Your kisses fold gently into the riverbeds of my skin with a reverence undeserved and the little truths you tell to my shoulder my hips my collarbone are secrets only in the dark.

It still burns, every time. It probably wouldn't if he had them more than twice a year, but the soft shiver of nicotine down his throat only reminds him how much he hates it. How much he hates her. She left him a pack of cigarettes covered in smiley faces, five pointed stars, and neon green hearts wrapping his initials in inky hugs. She laughed every time he told her life was too short for cigarettes and kissed him, promising, always promising, she'd stop before his next birthday. But he ended up eating caramel cheesecake alone, and ignoring the taste of salt that came with every mouthful. Now he smokes a cigarette twice a year, one f

His breath on her skin was frosted lightening at midnight, and the roll of thunder between her ribs the echo of a summer storm. She heard only the soft exhale of air across his lips in the silence between each heartbeat and counted the number of seconds by each muffled I love you her heart whispered endlessly.

If you asked the saucer-eyed frogs about the moon, they would tell you instead of its reflection upon their glassy pools, and recite to you their favorite sonnets, in chorus, should you so choose. They sing out of rhythm, out of rhyme, out of tune: Shimmer, glitter, sparkle, and twinkle Our darling, our sweetheart, our dear. We love you more than raindrops, and fireflies, and Lilly pads big enough for two. You kiss our windows, our roofs, and our doors Dance, play, weep, or laugh,     we love you           all the more. The romantic, the blind, the saucer-