You’re stupid but have nice eyelashes

Alexandra Wuest

I want to drain the sky of its blueness,
Siphon every liter of melancholy from the clouds

I would take an eraser to our history, prod at the smudges and the seams of oblivion.
         Tracing your shoulder blades, I wonder what it would be like to unravel your spine

I drop my words into your ear and hear the echo in the void that exists there

None of us remember being brand new
But we all once were
glittering flecks of snow landing on unfurled tongues

I just want to keep stitching the word ‘and’ to our story
I tell you this while you are sleeping
Hiding my words in our tangled sheets and your snores

We stretch our spines towards the sun in some dance of photosynthesis
Some refusal of our stunted existence
An affirmation of our coordinates on the earth
Latitudes and longitudes stitching our many useless platitudes
To the skin we have long called home

You were all eyelashes and I was all false expectations

The ship was sinking
But you weren’t even on the boat

I sew words to your hands
Unsaid but heard

I scrape together all of the debris
Of my misunderstandings and misplaced hopes
And meld them together with desire

Improbable probabilities, 
         impossible possibilities

All etched in your bare flesh

In this stillness we have invented a silent alphabet
You are not mine
And I was never yours

I’m sick of ‘almosts’
Getting caught in my lungs

I spooned the clouds into my coffee this morning
And yet it still tasted bitter and tangled in my throat
Curdled fever dreams

In my sleep, I had fingernails for teeth
So I went out and got a French manicure