May, 2015
"Hey, wait."
She pops a cherry candy in her mouth
I count to ten
She opens her lips and a ladybug is perched there like a cute tongue stud,
Waits just long enough to stop making me nervous
Before it flies away to someone's garden.

July 2015
We walk everywhere.
It's not grown up.
There's always stuff in our pockets and in summer a little halo of snow follows her around
And weighs her hair down.
We sit on the grass by the drainage ditch outside the shopping plaza eating garlic knots,
Never sure how weird it looks,
Whether the folks leaving the DMV find us embarrassing or inspirational

September 2015
We fuck like living in a house that's been abandoned since the 60s
My appliances are never wired right and
Your body is a rotary phone I don't know how to operate
I whisper in your ear
"Can you hear me now?"
And we hold still until the squirrels' nest in the attick
Quiets long enough for me to hear you answer
We're not sure there even is a circuitbreaker anymore
Most nights we just lay there in the dark
Because the pillows are the only things we know how to repair

November 2015
Next time some ivy league kid is rude to you at your restaurant job
I'm strapping the tent to my backpack
And carrying you to the Appalachians
Where the sky opens up
And we're gonna scream it out like fishercats
Hurl pianos at the sleeping construction sites
Skip the cattlespurs in our clockwork
Out into the atmosphere
Propelled out there on a jetstream of all the fucked up shit they put you through
And everything they told you not to cry about
And every time they told you to man up
Howl at the moon so loud
Every dog in North Carolina starts barking
And every person starts barking
All the way back to business majors at UNC and all the homeless folks on Franklin Street
Together
We're gonna scream every pushed aside truth
And every crumpled up feeling
Back into the atmosphere
Filter a hundred years of carbon emissions through our trembling bodies
Shot out into space like a giant robot anime finally
Beam of pure goddamn human catharsis
Into a new star

May 2016
"Hey, wait."
She pops a cherry candy in her mouth
I count to ten
She opens her lips and a ladybug is perched there like a cute tongue stud,
Waits just long enough to stop making me nervous
Before it flies away to someone's garden.