K's Kyrielle

Ninth

I find myself
distilled to my base elements.
Cupped in your hand and mixed
with melted sunlight I ask,
Did it ever mean anything to you?
Or was I just your fucking height-man?

My bones sang under a juniper tree,
scattered and shining;
it’s a good thing I’m scattered now,
we weren’t much good altogether.

This is the history of water. Seeps through
airtight fingers – recalls each touch of copper,
lead, porcelain, the warmth of two naked bodies
in a moonlit lake, the fury that only tear ducts know.
Heart leaking something so strong it can be smelled
from two blocks away,

teach me to write ;n;

:3

Tenth

People only show you who they truly are
when they’re losing.
You sank me like the Sheffield,
not explosively, instead drawing it out
as long as you could.
Your eyelashes tally your kills -
those who tried to love you, and lost.

Eleventh

;akwdhjagksdhjagkdjhs
d’sgfhjgjkl
a;lsdfghkbknvefj
agds;jnfdajklnadlns;;jklndsagljkndfsg
;djklnsbjklnv;ldkgnetwoihj13[0iho
oethgnvjn ;kj o[ub voj 234o v4op
sdlvk [on dobnro w08ein 430i fjnnwgk
OPKnadvso
oiansaJOBNkl a ojae
nobn oan oiug aw

I’m running out of keys
and the sun’s coming up

Twelfth

i.
numbers approximate

ii.
hindsight is 20/20

vi.
you have stars on the souls
of your feet. They scorch
the earth as you retreat

xvii.
the dentist said I have no cavities
the dentists isn’t looking hard enough

ii.
hindsight is 20/20

;akwdhjagksdhjagkdjhs
d’sgfhjgjkl
a;lsdfghkbknvefj
agds;jnfdajklnadlns;;jklndsagljkndfsg
;djklnsbjklnv;ldkgnetwoihj13[0iho
oethgnvjn ;kj o[ub voj 234o v4op
sdlvk [on dobnro w08ein 430i fjnnwgk
OPKnadvso
oiansaJOBNkl a ojae
nobn oan oiug aw

I’m running out of keys
and the sun’s coming up

you're a total lazypants but I like it/you anyway ^_^

Thirteenth

Lingering in the lamp-lit rain
we snatch at scarce motes of sunlight
and press them to each other’s chests -
they’re too valuable to be held with mere fingers.

There are markings on my arm of record
floodwaters, like the marks a mother puts on a doorframe
to measure her son’s height. Snowmelt is not my concern,
only the cumulonimbus volutes that put it there.

Fourteenth

We stayed up all night
after we carved ‘return to sender’
into our left wrists with a Hagedorn needle.
We were already ataxic,
but not yet decomposing.

Fifteenth

I thought I heard the murmur
of gods
or the praying of saints
but it was just wind
through a keyhole

we watched the sunset fade
over the course of three
and a half minutes

“don’t worry
it will be back tomorrow”

Sixteenth

It’s been just over a year
since I swapped my cigarettes
for lavender stems.
I still haven’t forgotten how to exhale
poison
but now the globs of tar I spit from my lips
are cracked
images and words,
like cracks in a five-decade-old footpath,
C# played over and over, as loudly as I can;
the sound of fingernails in forearms,
and the reverberation of falling backwards.
Old habits die hard,
but I smell sweeter these days.

Seventeenth

I am a sieve
made by holes punched in my skin
by a nurse drawing blood -
black, like treacle, putrid
and amaroidal, burning
holes through vial, gloves, flesh,
and the palms of my hands.
It’s all a metaphor for something,
but it will take someone more water-
tight than me to catch it.

Eighteenth

i.
I watched the sky paint
itself dark,
and saw you between the clouds,
eyes straining against the colour
of the night.

ii.
I practiced loving you
by eating fire,
hourly.

iii.
A sliver of lemon rind
in my coffee, and my tongue
tingles from your touch -
strokes of midnight beating
a tattoo into the backs of your hands,
tentatively wrapped
around my throat.

Nineteenth

I measured time in cigarette smoke
while eating clouds under an overpass.
Rain clings to the air like beads of sweat,
and steam streams off my skin -
a result of my diet of fire salad and secrets,
the kind of secrets that leak
and leave trails (the only ones worth having).
I loved you in slow motion,
razor blades pressed to wrists,
torture endured at low doses,
and enough near-death experiences
to convince us to pack,
but not enough to abandon ship;
You make everyone else
everyone else.
I can forgive you for leaving me behind;
you were always the most beautiful
when you were flying away.

Twentieth

i.
Forgive me; I am young.
Stars blinked out between dial
tones, the 5/4, 8-bit sound-track
to heat-death.

ii.
Time is the apex predator.

iii.
2am in London,
fucking on the roof of your apartment
you coloured the sky with my bruises.

iv.
Eating sun-peeled paint from walls
of my cortex I talked about killing time.