i.

That’s when he said, ‘What I want most badly
is to be understood, so much so that
I only let in men who, foregoing
every pleasantry, go before they

want to understand me. Which is why my
expectations of them are fewer than
none, no one wants this baggage. No, I don’t
want to be the only one not in on

the joke. Solitude is no worse than what
some misperceive as loneliness if it
gets you what experience can’t, firsthand
authority on what goes on in my

head when the world ignores me.’ What held him
was the light, promising our words would not
escape these walls. This street our tomb, its broad
city of calloused lines arteries no

                    ii.

longer clogged at night when memories walk
blindfolded, shadowed in heights hitting us
with what we both need. Kaleidoscopic
windowpanes exchanging strange reflections

feeding us cyanide clouds of pastels
just bright enough to let us meet in, and
hide from, their crippling sight. To keep up, in
spite of its cost, this fight inside of what

might be the most decisive blow to our
doubt. To grip in our fists this cup filled to
overflowing with them, and never let
slip again, such secrets as now we can

handle only in quotes. Going without
until we understand why we did then
what keeps this heart from knowing how, when shown
capsules of colour which descend in droves

                    iii.

like stoned locusts riding broken rainbows.
Fading out with them until no longer
glowing, winging without caution the wind
they throw against the gold being so damned

open with someone so closed you want to
know bestows. In those suicide poses
the hunger of our bones takes on as clothes,
it goes to show how far love’s ghost will go

before it returns full, as if nothing
ever happened. His hands all over this
part of me others’ lips only whispered
about one day maybe owning, sharing

together in shouldering the burden
of somehow turning the smouldering hurts
of a former flame, from hell’s painful coals
to golden things more worthwhile than saying,
over and over, why I feel this way.