may chaps;

a collection of poems written in may.

{ prompt: try to write from a man’s perspective }

//  i. violet

glittered fever; she’s otherworldly under the violet, neon contagion;
half-mine, half-already-erased.

the smoke wraps its greedy fingers;  
filthy and wanting, around our purpled throats.

and when she touches me,
 i come undone.

// ii. citrus

her mouth is a bruised orange; she tastes of clementines. 

i bite a kiss into her mouth, and think of
summertime. sweet, simple, unassuming.

i take a bite 
of her; too. just for good measure.

she molds herself into whatever vision
i’ve concocted; lazy, citrus-laced,

she thinks it’s what i 
want;

i don’t have the heart to tell her that i’ve stopped 
wanting anything ;

 a long time ago.

we lie in bed,
a sleep- hazed, orange.

tangerine-clover dreams; one foot in this world; and
 one
in the next.

---

// primal ; moon-kissed (3-in-1 poem)


there’s something raw;                elegant
and primal                                ; moon-kissed

just below the skin       /          lie flowers, tender and
 

it                                                                                        
                                                      
 hungers,
                                                      wanting


w a i t i n g                                for your mouth to open


to sink                                           
its teeth.                                         
                                                
                                                      and seal it  
                                                                with a kiss.

---

//

the hazy, neon lights reflect in the dark set 
of her pupils

and dazed, she leans over him, pressing her nostril to the weathered
table

; and prays to every god

saint

or devil; that 
   this time

it will be different.

that sin isn’t just a flower

sitting prettily on the roof 
of her washed-out,
corroded tongue,

waiting to be
 plucked,

        ravished,

             branded.

by the next boy with
a million dollar smile.

some sort of god does hear her, benevolently
sends her an angel; 

or maybe it was just another 
; trick

the devil had up his sleeve.

---

//
crepúsculo 

hanging like a soft blanket over 

my eyebrows; 

i outline the shape of your shadow 

as it walks further away.

salt air; bites at my organs and

corrodes the arteries 

i watch a fisherman in the distance; and i am caught in the net

slate gray and suffocating,

scales ripped from the belly, soft underside 
;  peeled from the womb 
torn from the mother

i am the sea — slate gray and volatile

woman  / rage 
palms bleached with sorrow ;

your shadow swallows the shoreline, &

twilight hangs 

in the 

mist.

---

// liminal

slowly, slowly count the breaths
between my ribs.

i listen to our silences.

they flutter, like eyelashes on silver-touched bodies,
the ghosts of last night dissolving into 
the light of morning.

blue-grey, and
your hands are ice.

i shudder, but deep down,
i like this feeling:
your hands on mine,
threading, tying, burrowing—

becoming
 
something not quite me,
and not quite you.

the morning holds no memories of what came before it, so

decipher me,
slowly, slowly.

take me apart— down to the sinew,
and braid yourself into the seams.

i exhale, my blood humming with you, and you—

thumb through the pages, marking your favorite lines.
you recite them—eyes closed, breath caught

from memory.

unmake me,
my darling 

slowly, slowly

we have time.

---

[ i wrote the void and her dying star, grave daughter, the coffee tastes stale because my android never makes it right, and celadon all in the month of may, too; & they can be found under my posts here on substack. <3 ]