alone, i am not

of an easel like the

gibbons of mandevilla

i need not three legs

to stand.

this flightless heart flees

farther than that of those

spineless silver falcons.

winter craves upon those

rose hearts who become

so frail a branch in the silhouette

of a stopgap intimate.

they wither blue

beneath a deathless shade

ripped narrow in the game

of limbic double dutch.

a careless casualty

in the name of some

greying prayer.

her spine craves rhythm and gushes cadence in some awry disjointed disco. she calls it a whalesong, a disgruntled rose-coated moan in the nest of his throat that bathes her innocence in julienne sliced shadows and minced morals. she is that of a seashell, a conch perhaps. floss white and empty. she pulls mulberry macaroon clouds from his dream tied tongue and laces them daisy and alabaster to wear round' the garden of her neck. she is antheia in a bloody mary ball gown at half past ten, courting your mirror like unripe plum boys in their evanescent prime. she puckers, places, misplaces her lips in a half-baked brown sugar pseudo pastry of love fermented flesh. huckleberry and home, she thrives only in sea foam and rented skin, threadbare springs and cala lily cacophony the soundtrack of her bones. she knows only the whipped cream winter of her ligaments, feels only the rhubarb crumble of last night's silk parfait pool at the linen of her feet. she'll bind grandma's fairytales in a systematic shuffle of denim and trade them for the sorbet ballet of two abstract tarpaulin echoes. she asks not that you stay, but that when you go, leave your shadow.

you owe her that at least.