Distancing

Day 1: Throw all these words out of a window.
Day 4: The Sky remains blue, and not to be hugged.
Day 9: Pouring heart out, into sink. Peeling redness.
Day 17: Began counting despite lack of fingers.
Day 25: Began counting all hugs that were missed.
Day 31: Thinking of us Lesbians; and everyone erased.
Day 59: We failed in realizing how nothing comes to pass.
Day 100: Zeroes gaping, curved and sharp, fitting.
Day 219: What if there was no alternative? No vaccine for touch?
Day 370: Began projecting futures off the tips of raised hairs.
Day 541: I’ve tasted wet lips once, long before my lips had hangnails.
Day 712: Numbers, Skies, Zeroes, Hair on my lips and touchy, touching.
Day 713: Nights becomes taut and I didn’t even get to touch them.

Day *11: There is no longer a pandemic that failed to touch everyone.

Day 2*6*: I lost you in writing: you too, were out of the window, out of touch.

Lack of Dawn

How we used to breathe starlight,
because I imagined there were no
clouds overhead: each cloud was
every exhalation of how this night
fails to end, how I keep dreaming
of a comet that would not fall
for me. Each dream counts the
number of breakfasts I’ve missed
and the number of swords I eat
during dinner; I counted ten
to completion, to end all wounds.
See: all I did was to feed myself
waiting for the sun to rise on set.

Murphy’s Law for Interstellar Fissures

One night, I swallowed a planet.
Two moons later, a wrong word
shifted a wormhole via bad praxis.
Using language as a fork for soup:
these tears I stippled on my cheeks
where they should be rolling down.
Another night of failed application.
When you deconstruct my apologies
in a black hole, all sentiment is lost
like the wormhole above. Speaking,
when I cannot hear myself in space.
It’s not like you heard, or replied.

Swallow

Words she took out of my mouth,
she wrote a poem; Found the moon.
I take back what I said about her:
You Gorgon, with a bite you created
the Crescent. If that is not beauty,
there is still the phrase about phases:
On your face, figurative expressions-
All frightening the cores of stars,
showering praise as I cried the night.
A lump in my throat turned to stone.
Which was hard. Difficult to love.
Love too difficult, gravity too easy.

Writer’s Trap

I found a poem so clichéd it was painful.
Proceeded to use a bandage. Left it where
I dropped it. Clichéd is now a pun for hurt.
It is eye-catching like how Fool’s Gold is an
idiom. By association it is a mousetrap topped
with a slice of cheese. The cheese has holes in it.
I am not actually a mouse. I like metaphors to the
extent of breaking my fingers for them. Wrapped them
in this piece, applied pressure to stop the bleeding.
Found clichés abound under the sun even though
it is nighttime now. No outer space references here.
Just filler in inner spaces without the negativity.