Nostalgia: Epilysium Onederous

8/1/08

She loved you like they love in movies,
Everything has that music,
It feels like the sounds you make,
Your kisses are like storms,
Like drugs no one has ever had,
Her heart feeling like the little boy who runs,
Scattering the flock of brown and yellow birds.

Your veins glow blue beneath your skin,
Your lips are pressed against the sunlight in her mouth.
Her words are the heat against my forehead,
The kisses on my shoulders, you think.
You wanted to feel how she felt that night,
Wrapped in the cold air,
Calling your name in her sleepy haze of tears.
The moon is like your face, you tell her.
You always look pale and sicker, sicker.
But are you happy there?

When you are closer to death,
i think you see the ghosts because you're closer to their world than ours.
They are the ones that will never die, you said.
i know i will never see,
The kids screaming in the streets,
Killing themselves these days.
Can't you wait,
Just for tomorrow at least?

i did wait,
There, she says.
Everything had that smell,
The world began to fall apart,
My fingers tracing your face,
Little wet stars caught inside your eyes from that night.

She found them all up on that mountain,
Holding the stars in their hands,
The celestial kids.
Their fingers clawed at the sky,
Opening their chests for the moon.
We can't stay here too long, she said,
Her eyes the color of nothing,
Filled with tidal waves and orchid sunsets.
They aren't for us,
They're too beautiful,
Made from glass,
And if they fall,
They'll shatter like the rest of them,
Captured with our hearts and mouths and lungs.

And ever since you left us there,
They never wanted me, she says.
Maybe because i fell into the mouth of that black growling monster,
The one with the voice full of death.

His bones were harder than she thought,
Kissing her forehead,
Telling her the dreams were nothing to fear.
He sits on the couch all day,
Holding the box full of nothing but brittle mirrored music and magnetic swans.
Watch them dancing for me, he tells her.
Maybe you could learn something.
But you leave me alone all day when they're always around, she whispers against his neck,
Sand in her lungs.

In the summer she says,
Why can't we stay here forever in the desert,
Like we're really in some sort of book or something.
Why can't i just sit here,
Watching your lips forming words
Your hands making sounds,
The heat from the sun pounding on my shoulders,
Sweat beading up on your forehead.
She wanted to ask you to stay there forever,
She didn't want to lose you again like she did before,
but she knew you wouldn't.

Because she cannot keep you caged like the blue little birds in her mother's house.
They are getting sick, you told her.
She wanted to believe you then,
That you couldn't live forever,
Not realizing that you've aged even more than last year.
You wrapped your arms around her,
Telling her that you were sorry in your almost whisper,
Searching for her in your bed.
i didn't want to admit it, she screams at night,
But i never felt safer with your words tangled in my hair,
Even when i waited until you were sleeping.
Sleeping so that i could leave.