I realise there's something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they're experts at letting things go.

Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

I know it’s stupid to not own a gun yet have so many triggers, but in some other world gigantic seashells hold humans to their ears and listen to the echo of machines.

When I haven't been kissed in a long time, I create civil disturbances, then insult the cops who show up, till one of them grabs me by the collar and hurls me up against the squad car, so I can remember, at least for a moment, what it's like to be touched.

We didn’t deny the obvious, but we didn’t entirely accept it either. I mean, we said hello to it each morning in the foyer. We patted its little head as it made a mess in the backyard, but we never nurtured it. Many nights the obvious showed up at our bedroom door, in its pajamas, unable to sleep, in need of a hug, and we just stared at it like an Armenian, or even worse— hid beneath the covers and pretended not to hear its tiny sobs.

I want to whisper poetry into your mind and imprint love letters to your soul and dance with you in an empty white room of potential

No rescue boat can save the touches I left bobbing in the wild ocean of your flesh, but if they cut open your heart, like the belly of a shark, dumped its contents on a table—would there be any trace of me?