play, pause, replay

half-art, half-accident

April spills out raw—honey and

strawberries slink through the dusk. 

I pull on my mom's old cardigan, as grey as

the tea she forgets on the nightstand, cool

and stale but familiar, damn it.

Blue lights splatter against your ice cream cone,

a flicker of something half-art, half-accident.

Chaos clings to us; a dust of apricot skins and

orange-washed mouths wrapped in 

citrus peels, stained in the pulp of reckless 

youth, hungry for more than one fruit.

You scribbled a love poem

on the back of a greasy diner receipt;

The half-hearted flicker of the streetlight

and promises as thin as the paper.

Last night, a guy (with too much history)

fucked me over threadbare sheets, in my 

cramped apartment; his breath, a mix of

desperation and spearmint; not nearly 

sweet enough to mask the bitterness. 

After, gathering my clothes, I thought of 

you, the fabric heavy with the scent of lust.

I thought of how you'd shape this chaos 

into something like love in your mouth, 

or maybe just Tuesday.

Sometimes I feel like an oil painting left too

long in the sun, the edges blurred.

Mirror balls scatter fractured stars underfoot

in the breathing hallways. I twirl, heels

clicking out a rhythm on the tile—your

late birthday wish lost in the echoes.

We once played under cherry blossoms,

porcelain dolls with glassy eyes and chipped smiles,

kissing fiercely under the vast, unblinking blue.

Our world—it's big, brutal, biting.

It's cold pasta at 3 a.m., red wine straight from the bottle,

and sex that doesn't bother with goodbye.

Sometimes, a Cohiba between trembling fingers, the 

smoke twists in our lungs, like a ghost

of something burnt out long ago.

It's you and you and you. I'm terrified you mean it 

when you say "love", because what we have has

edges as sharp as the shattered mirror balls.

I want to live forever in that snapshot—splattered

paints, the haze of your laughter that meld into the air.

But morning comes, sharp and sober, and I scream

your name, not sure if it's from loss or longing.

I dream of us, wild as drunk teenagers jumping

into the river, never surfacing—just two bodies

submerged, refusing air, drunk

on each other and drowning.