the slow art of breathing bitter

Port Wine

I'm the dark port wine

That bursts and burns

Her throat

On roaring nights,

Blue and lone.

She loves the way

I turn her demons

into a pile of ashes;

a single stain of red.

A smear of late-summer

in the melting pinks and yellows,

slicing her heart into two.

Rainbirds and ash—in the arid silence

of losing oneself in does it take all.

And just like another marigold song,

the paper cuts turn blue, 

and the wine feels colder than winter.

Bottle green growls and 

rust-red blood bubbles

Out of her

Screaming veins

and lavender cuts,

as she takes me

in, slowly;

deserted throat and thirsty stomach.

She touches, teases, and

caresses me with her bow lips.

I'm the caged cerise in her split world

where love runs errands of shotgun kisses.

Where men cry upon Aphrodite's thighs—

The city flows underneath her late poetry

and wine-cursed starry blood.

"You're made of

igniting hunger and love."

I try drawing echoes

Of burning hearts

and pitiful stars.

But she breaks

The brittle, green glass

at the plastered wall,

tears down the faded notes,

and leave soon after. 

Daisy doesn't know me; she knows how I taste.

I don't know her heart; I know how it beats.

We're the remembrances of veins and molten lava

flowing through each other's limbs—how shapelessly

the moon hangs around the bleeding stars and tattoo kisses.

I hide my art beneath the faded sweater sleeves.

I burn at my strength; she doesn't come anymore.

Deep down, 

Above all cloying lavenders and paper-thin lies, I still know I'm worth it.

–things have started rippling in the blues of time.

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A/N: Hit the little star if you think this poem deserves one!