Follow me. #Return to the woods with your silk-stitched heart. Call to the moon as you exhume yourself from the earth. Tell shimmered reflections all the stories of the stars. The wind remembers your name.

Speak it and become.
I will guide you home.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Tell that girl you love her, tell her #plain, before that heart of yours bursts to stain. The ache in your chest never really fades, so hold on dear to that wild soul. Tell her, before she gets on that train.  

Tell that girl you love her, tell her plain.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She misses them, those memories between now and then, a palette blend of #Loganberries— sweet to tart. That nip on her tongue, heaven-sung psalms when she buried her mother. And when the forest calls, she still runs with war on her heels to greet her in the dark.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Worry not your tired heart. The #fawn still adores the meadow, pines for the wildflowers when the herd must move. Be not afraid of your change. The world cradles you close, just listen. Your stories must be told, the break of day wills it so. The end is near, my dear.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Deliver me. End this wretched scheme. My wings ache to fly again, to have the wind beneath the quill, to write songs of the ancients. Still, you find yourself cowardice, suffering to be alive, unable to cut the threads that bind. I pity the will of your hands.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

There is a #hornet in her lungs, all twisted up violence and revenge, oh, someone say a prayer. The blade in her hand tastes like an answer. And she will keep it her secret known only in her dreams, buried in a garden bursting at the seams, there is ill to calm.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is #drawn from the skyline, poured from the horizon and manifested red, all those swirling locks, those peppered cheeks. The tides curl under her spell, spiraled Fibonacci and perfect. Her fingertips divine the stars, constellation calligraphy— she knows your fate.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Your heart tells me all the things you couldn't. Don't worry, I understand the #scorn, how weak it all makes you feel. The anger that seeps from beneath your floorboards. Your ghosts speak to me in bloody words, marred and tangled, just how you left them. Speechless.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A #crocus in watercolor, the brush of hurt paints it beneath his battered eye. A mangling of words the night prior, the dazzling pressures of knuckles to skin, apologies stretched thin in sanguine marks on the pavement.

He cannot bear to look in the mirror now.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She writes her hurt on his heart to be free, fait accompli, pleads for a mending in grievances. And when he departs, she drowns in a sea of fine art pastels, painted with sea-salt shells to send her dreaming of angel thread, spindled red. She will fly again.
══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════
It is a weight she carries, tastes like #strawberries, lingers on her lips an offering. She consumes the burden, a wildfire, crystallized sugar on her tongue, a liar laid to rest. Fruit devoured, stains the teeth, a sacrifice, she sinks beneath in mourning.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Submission, an #oath in dacryorrhea, a river man-made and covered in shame.
Guilty, an ode to mens rea, blood on the palms, smeared across abandoned halls.
Relent, a eulogy in euphoria, because there's always a must in dying.
Destroy, memoria, the twisting of fate.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Diatribe alchemy, forged anatomy, a figure rises from the grave. Bullet falter, hands woven on an alter, man down for the good death. Words of song, a farewell before long, rasping the end on a hospital bed. Heavy are those withering words spoken like epics.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Nebulous daydream, sunbeam to light up your twisted spine, pay no mind to brain stem lanterns guiding you home. You crave loose ends, starshine wanderer aching for purpose. Close your eyes, listen to the trees, write their stories on your bones. Listen carefully.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Chemical invasion, #caustic abrasion, blooming pansy beneath the surface. Adrenaline, dopamine, God-particle unseen, spirit sway when the body gives way in lament. A heart dies, medical supervision lost to the tides, a fifty-fifty chance with no coin to flip.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Salt on asphalt, tastes like blood, #iron for the vocal cords to sing songs of the damned. They, shouldered by night, unsure of their rite when the full moon breathes, makes a symphony out of the sea. Pulmonary threads, directional, unsaid, they wait in silence.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The sun bleeds, a ghost caught fire, recedes punctual in a day gone by. But here at the bus stop, time holds still under the hum of fluorescence, her skin cast blue, see-through, tells the same story. She prays for a new #beginning, to be rewritten in the dark.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Complicated sighs, hands trembling at their station in contemplation of chess pieces when pawns go astray. Keratalgia, pupils in eclipse, the iris begs for space in Abaddon consumption. Have mercy, #condemned cruelty when he whispers her name like violence.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Teeth salacious, reach #fugacious, she is pulled taut over the space across his heart. A whisper— nothing more. Figment fractured, organ failure, system failure, she is a glitch, an infection from the dark, tainted in all the ways he adores her from the grave.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Farewell, she thinks, to this bleeding heart. Heavy is the weight of the blood-stained hardwood, aching under pressure of crime scene epitaphs, those blown-out photographs of evidence. She is the body left behind, resurrected— someone become her apostle.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A tearing at liminal scenes, shakes the ground below their feet in a fit of #chaos. They aren't hidden here, the woes of the gods. The cloudy sky splits to reveal a glowing, full moon and falling stars crossing towards the horizon.

Angels. They are angels. Falling.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She has a #lonely soul, wayward and outcast, treading singular in the vast forest. But when she finds an abandoned cottage, everything left just as it were, a frozen memoryscape, the house whispers, “I've been waiting for so long. Welcome home.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She coats her face carmine, fingers painting war streaks all the way into her hair. A ritual without fire, blood #pungent pyre, how it glitters in the sun, inspires the beast inside. It hums in her veins, that portent conjure, the taste of iron in her teeth.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It was a quiet #descent. Black magic beneath her hands, sigils carved into wood furniture, all conjured by the cover of night. But as she pricks her fingers with blood, it wasn't always this way. Desperate hearts do desperate things. She just wants her wife back.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

“She is #immunocompromised.” The little girl doesn't quite understand the word, just knows that she cannot go outside. But she watches the world from her window, making up stories for all the people that pass her by, crafting little letters to send to them one day.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Years apart, how a broken heart mends with time. But when she answers the door to find him just as he had always been, her atria swell with blood. They crash into one another, desperate where she feels like a girl again, his presence like #oxygen— terribly necessary.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It was all an accident. Dripping #poppy on the floor, someone get the door, tell them she's unavailable. The man in the kitchen is clutching the side of his neck, skin pallid and panicked as she holds the towel in fear, swallowing iron— her first time trying to feed.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She buries the bones she finds in the forest, makes little flower crowns for unmarked graves. When it rains, she weeps, too. Every loss profound, how #delicate her lace-trimmed heart, how often the poor thing breaks, stitched back together with all the love she has.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Spiders on the window sill #envy those on the streetlights. A car passes by and kicks up water on a ghost's shoes. The gas station clerk asks how he can help, but he wonders if anyone ever thinks if they can help him. The local tabby goes missing.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

There's a #thunder in her veins, clamor on the rolling plains outside of her bedroom window. A prickle, just before lightning strikes, twinges the muscle work of her heart true. Something calls her name, all the same when she dreams, and oh, she's listening now.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Morning, #mourning, Sunday adjourning all those parts of her she thought she had together. Mercy does not always come swift, and she imagines someone else needs it more than she does. She thinks of visiting the grave, but worries even her dead are tired of her.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is the dead— eulogistic seismology, #antagonistic biology with all her sharp edges. Cold and thin, whispers within that retrograde skull, amnesia to cull the life she had before. But the vampire can only be herself, fit with an unholy mouth and sarcasm to match.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is the hunted, the #prey, holy water flooded, pray where you have no hope. But as her eyes close, she imagines all the ways she will find them in dreamscapes— kaleidoscope fear to unravel minds, already on their death beds. She has hope. Funerals by morning.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She licks the blood from his shoulder, sugar smolder, tastes #divine. Coming from behind him, her smile is all lurid, carmine, but he returns it in confidence. “You spoil me,” she says low. He cants his head slightly, reaches for her hands, “You make it so easy.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Stroke on her spine, a ghost's silver shine, glint in her eye, lips parted in anticipation. The messages are #endless, vying for opportunities to tell their stories, to be part of the world again. But she waits for that frequency divine to speak portent, of the end.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is #cracked porcelain, kintsugi suture under strain, suddenly laced with gold. A marvel, she touches all those gilded places, regards them with venerated graces, but her heart leaks ichor, bleeds onto her insides to paint her a masterpiece in her weighted sorrows.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He #crushes the tear beneath his thumb, smears it ever so softly against her cheek. She weeps quietly, for they are not alone in this place. Cupping her face, he begs for eye contact before whispering, “We're going to make it out of here.”

The door knob rattles.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She sighs, #mesmerized, beneath the tides of music, far away from here. The words filter through her headphones and she is dancing under the moonlight, sky light, a ritual only she knows, a message sent in trance. She may be alone, but she is everywhere.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her heart struggles, tangled in a mess of strings, wings a flutter, #captured in the cage of her ribs. She wants the words that hide behind her lungs. Dreams flow through and through her veins, and oh how she dreams of wild things, of the future, a mighty wonder.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Tender heart, worlds apart, she talks to him in all that she does, knows he listens when he can. The flowers in the living room breathe and she understands. She writes him a letter to take to the grave—

P.S. I'm okay. I promise.

before she weeps into the carpet.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

His touch #inspires wonder, eyes glaze in that filament haze, magic on the mind. They sure are something with their division, halved and then quiet, elision, made up when their hands, their lips meet guillotine sure, sharp and exigent— the first time all over again.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Red horizon, morning #presage, crimson ribbons slip through windows, bloody visage. She does not worry of the end when they are cosmic, ever so close to oblivion for their dangerous proximities, trembling thunderstorm hearts, ready for collision.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

In the cemetery, she sits next to someone she does not know under the moon, their silence enough to permeate their space. She cannot find anything to say, because what else is there? Alone, body left in an #unforgiven grave, her apologies died, too. What a shame.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Their hands are covered in residual ink, leftover smudging from the press, not quite perfected. Sigils stamped in leather. They are workers of words and #bone, creating tomes for their greatest upcoming scholars, those showing promise in divination of the gods.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She wakes #abandoned, discarded into the catacombs where she was born and lives. There is no fear in familiarity, marveling at a spider's newest design in the cavern of a broken skull. This is not her final resting place. No, she is destined for much beyond here.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Tired #amber eyes watch the crowd undulate in tandem with the music, their masquerade of the umbral dark, rainbow crystals to scatter light across bodies. He knows their failures, what makes their souls ache. A patron demands another drink and he pours it, exhausted.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Time ticks, the room so slow, surreal perforations between their inability to speak. There were mistakes, #crestfallen heartbreaks, withered onto knees, sobbing into the floorboards. An apology lives in his lungs, only a messenger, but he says nothing. Nothing at all.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A face, a #reflection, a wraith in their direction trapped screaming in the dusty glass chipped at the corner. They smile, know this is the exchange, to be haunted alone, a crackled voicemail on the phone, and that's okay, too.

There's always a price to be alive.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A hurried note stuffed in a coat pocket, words left behind, a dream of sayings past, a wonder why one feels the sudden burden of loss. A borrowed sentence from somewhere, elsewhere, who knows anything, anything at all? Throats are smothered, at #war with silence.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

An arch, a carnivorous #spine hungry for all its gravitational defiance, vertebrae science, twisting cartilage and bone into something ravenous. Teeth beneath shoulder blades, gnashing doubts to spit out absolutes, sordid truths, aching under the surface.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Ephemeral sigh, escapes her mouth all lily and moon water. Rejection, acceptance, neither of them matter on matters of death. She only signs them in, calls security for those in denial, pen to parchment, burning their very souls into a leather-bound book.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Do you find yourself lost? Something vile in your #blood cries out for testament. Beseeches, reaches for your absolute functions, lungs breathing, heart beating a song, perfect in its tenacity to live. Do you find yourself lost? Don't worry, my soul is wayward, too.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her mind splits #chiral, blooms chrysanthemum floral, brain melting into a spool, stitching fabric so beautiful, the sky glitters with envy. It swells in her chest, a blip in electrocardiography, a twinkle in astronomy, and it is then she knows was love is.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Compliant, contingency, a state of emergency, fire in her bones, she can feel it in her toes climbing. She is alive, listening to the orchestra of her heart, what a wondrous sound, beating a war drum that rattles the earth. A summoning, a calling— She is alive.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He is a #ghost in her teeth, haunted words, rituals in her throat stretched red for the screaming. Expose, expel, not all sinners go to hell, grasping, sewing themselves living memories into soul fabric, a woven reminder of all their wrongs, begging for forgiveness.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He says her name, gilded #honey, traps the bee in its own labor of love. She wants him closer, fissure between them on an atom bomb hesitation, a casualty for intentional presence, promised prize, powder sugar sighs caramelized, dazzled infinity, mandala patterns.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

In the #chrysalis of twilight dreams, she emerges incomplete, a halo in her eyes, a taste of understanding. Whispers across the shape of her skull, [I miss you.] She knows, she knows the other half of her soul, determined to find them again in the river of midnight.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It comes a #tsunami, measured only by the darkness it instills before violent collision. On her bruised knees, she prays again for a miracle, a syringe, something to ease the weight of her heart. Flooded memories, a room now empty, untouched and frozen in time.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Suffocation seeks to destroy respiratory cilia, a blending of limbo, #euneirophrenia, a shudder, ever so close to her hadal dreams, her train ride to ask him a question before they depart for the last time.

“Will you remember me?”

He smiles without eyes, “Always.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A wolfs splits its mouth apart, yellow teeth alpha, subdues the doe in a measure of squelched agony. Held hostage in between bone, smothered as the blood leaks, iron on the tongue, #fades anaptic, a soul heaven bound as a body is weathered and torn asunder.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He is honey wine, #spirited daffodil and sutured time, because he doesn't quite belong here. In the sun, he withers, aches for it in the dark, heliophile, heliogravure. He is a boy born of the stars, daring to shine too bright, with light coming from his fingertips.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Hands to palpate, understand all her functions, #arrhythmia when he touches her stomach, afraid that all those sorrows she has consumed will summon forth, like ghosts protruding beneath the skin. 'I'm not haunted,' she says, 'only missing people I've never met.'

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

I counted the seconds before I heard you breathe, while you counted the moments before my heart gave way. Blue fire in your eyes electric, #intensifies light, spectrometric where words betray you, catalytic frequencies immeasurable in division so close, so dire.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It #rattles your confines, shakes loose that ghost clinging to your soul. But is it not yours? This specter of sorrow and anguish, left behind when you lost them? Do you not tremble before your mistakes? Withered is your resolve, your charge, and oh, how I pity you.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Fingerprints burned into skin. A throat crushed in revenge, all velvet #violence in the clamor of silence. Lungs give way, the art of breathing amnesia, a filter of gasoline rainbows from spine to skull noxious. There were words in their throat. Letters asphyxiated.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A veil over #witch's water, folds and bends, the edges of an envelope, letter to send them a warning in the summer sun. But no one listens— no one wants to hear about the end of days when they're doing their best to live. Trying to find meaning before it's all over.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Sickness #exposed to bring her fever, find all those places in her mind to transpose those memories, hide them away. But she aches already in the comfort of missing, the shrouded blanket of loss and feeling alone, because sometimes, it's all you have.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A #candle, a flame, the way he says her name has her pooling, melted wax congealing beneath the warmth of his words, how she carries them trapped in her wayward lungs. And when she goes to speak them back, he hushes her so, because oh, how he knows, how he understands.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Knuckles raw, split to leaking, a carmine fist closing their margins, zygomatic bone to falter, operate beneath anesthetic, #orphic undertaker, money maker in a ring on the third round. Hands all over him then when the other man hits the stage, sweat-haze euphoria.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Scalpel to skin, an #ooze thin, enough to make her salivate. A parting, a prayer, the medicine— that divide, separated just enough for her to slip [into], formulate, mutilate all those sutures, to make him feel alive again. And when he breathes, he can taste her ghost.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She fractures to remove his sternum, pull apart his ribs, #agate Rorschach in layered colors, all their words pressed and kept in the box of his heart. Stylized, she covers her hands spectrum, bleeding, pulls the palette across her face to paint herself with hope.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her teeth are #fierce, in between blood that tastes like grenadine, all syrup and slow. But sloe are the means of her descent, cruel and pointed, anointed tragedy, she is to be adorned in thorns, skin piercing, will twisting for rebirth. Demons argue over her soul.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It clamors, singing bowl frequency deep, conjures a longing in the bones, old soul and odes, stories eradicated, folded into something new with time, such as it is. All that #noise, hungry for a listener, ripples on through to the membrane, blood-brain barrier bleed.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her hands are covered in raw earth beneath a willow tree, digging for the #secret she buried all those years ago. A beating heart sounds below the surface, louder and louder as she approaches closer now. They are listening, they are watching. They know

everything.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

An abandoned home, stained #moth wings and memories, howls a lonely song in the exposure of a broken window, a mouth wide in lack thereof, aching to be a sanctuary once more.
A mouse scurries into its little hole in the wall, tells the house, I'm here.
I'm here.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Fabled myth defamation, the story of creation held hostage and twisted god wine. Voices from the other side, tinnitus ring, paranoia breech, #metanoia seek, the feeling of blessed hands on cheeks, graces to hold faces holy and pray for the apocalypse.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It's all alive, #tectonic in surety, chronic for bloody purity, this crusade for the heavens. She, with her blackdamp veins, how they slither beneath the sheet of her skin, an occlusion between here and there. Falling for revenge, she's calling for wicked angels true.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Cellular invasion, heartbeat protrusion, an outline pressed on her chest, she's watching, salivating in that horrible mouth, so close to oblivion. #Saccade façade, he doesn't know all her desecrated spaces, the devil in good intentions, where his words fail.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Pitter-patter on the forest floor, feet stained soil, she carries her soul, the weight of #magic. Her heart glows in her bird's-nest chest, beats a melody soft, sutured. Hurried now, such is the pace come the end of the world, but lo, she has a story to tell.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Hands to crush tracheal, destroy passages, #asphyxiate, fingers ablate the skin, esophagus within. Visceral wrench to steal the voice box bloody, a marker for the end, to silence them all, no more words. She just wants some peace.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Tremors to shake the little house in her ribs, tiny rooms with tiny furniture toppling over, jumbling up her inner residencies. As petrified as she is alone with this demon, she swallows as she prepares to speak. She is not #brave— she only knows how to be herself.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She's #superstitious not because she wants to be, but because she needs to be. Vampires in mirrors, ghosts latching onto her spine, a boy just a marionette on strings. She doesn't have a black cat, but maybe she should. They are protectors of Hell's gate, after all.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Heartbreak, outbreak, she is infected. A flicker in those eyes, a well at the waterline, neglected. Curious are the ways she holds herself together in spite of, assuaged in the heat of summer, firefly glimmer, but she thinks of golden #ginkos in the fall.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

His heart breaks, bleeds ichor, #golden thick, glitters down and over his ribcage, settles intestinal mucosa, covers all the spaces he misses her so. He touches his chest, stains his fingertips shimmer to shine,
he will be fine,
he will be
f i n e.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It is a #haven for the dead, the dying, and those stuck between. The café menu you is a variety of abomination dining, but there are no judgments made here. Stuck on the window is a sign in beautiful chalk script: Please regard your fellow patrons with kindness.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She wonders what her insides look like; remnants of butterfly wings, putrid bile, glass shards, a spool of thread even— a child's collection, their hands scouting in long #abandoned homes. These are the treasures of the damned and they sure don’t glisten in the sun.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Plunge into the #summer swelter, the lingering of hands too close for deliverance, too far from exigence, dying for tactile consumption. Fingerprint indentation, radiation, toxic mutation in their bright exhumation, alive only for this hovering moment.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Delectable #spiral, frequency bible fluctuating lobe to lobe, aural sigh writhing along the hardwood floor. Viral urgency, verdancy in lush fervency, ivy cling for brain static, home in her cranial attic, her thoughts are magic, manifesting all that she has ever been.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Tattoo along her voracious spine, bent against gravity, harmony, a summoning in her confines, begging. Her hands linger in séance, a twitch, riveting by the seconds crossing over. Lucky, a four-leaf clover hidden beneath the bed, where her dead dream unto the living.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Give me your lilac heart, effervescent blood. Tell me your sorrows, soft sighs and morrows, when you will breathe again. That silk ache in your marrow will pass, relentless in strain. Weep and believe, find solace in the solstice, and the new moon will cradle you.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Daydream hologram, she fathoms to #turn herself inside out, hunt for every living piece he has left within her. Glass sharp, fragile pieces bladed, mangles her function, ardent blood to taste strata, every unforgiving layer laced with his tempestuous memories.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A message from beyond #escapes into her diaphragm, internal bleeding, soothsayer anagram,
tumbles into her mouth red,
telegram for the dead rising.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

An #acolyte, priestess of the moon, adorned evening primrose and dancing firelight when the wolves howl, tell her the ways of the savage. She knows, for she is graced with the fall of man, one of them. But she carves a path all her own, sings to the stars and sighs.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is a #sword, something to cleave him right in two, debilitate under her pointed fingertips. She wants to reach in, untangle his circuitry, cover herself with electric viscosity, become a conduit to his dreamscape synapses.

Chaos in design,
her hands know the way.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Blessed #apricity by the closeness of his hands, yearning to see him in the summer,
the soft hydrangeas a watercolor feast, paint paper speaking snow under the full moon, the light bursting in the morning,
choroid,
carotid,
critical—
how beautiful it all must be.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The #canyon of his ribs to spine, Y incision, tears him from organ to organ, find the infection in this room of finality, her hands all iodine and gloved weighs his lungs to see him
drowning,
drowning,
perforation pressure,
send him closer to God.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Hyperextension, vertebrae to cartilage on bone separation, lets the light inside. Syncope, she is rearranged body to brain matter, elevates her to #transcend where they should be whole again. Miracle on psalms, their scars stitched gold of all the things whispered.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A #spectacle to behold, they are colored poison. Spatial division, contaminated provision, fabric clutched to lessen proximity, friction against well-worn hands pulling one another to pieces, pieces scattered and tasted, a memory fabricated, hallucination swirl.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

What do your hands say? #Fight for me. The devil is adorned in purple, leaves bruises on the pancreas, aches on instinct.

What say you? Break me. Avulsion in preparation, paint me nebula, osteomancy, starshine jealousy. I am wretched in want.

Where are your words?

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Whimsical desire, she pulls herself through the earth, spilling onto lush green painted silver, a shadow cast by the epitaph left in mourning. Here to #manifest, alive as she ever was, lungs choking, heart ticking clockwork, dirt under her nails. She is born again.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Out they go, far from the safety of shore, so close to pinnacle when the waves begin their ceremonial fold. Backs arching in unison before they're on their boards, reaching to hold each other's hand, fingers intertwined, gilded salt and ocean tide to #ride the moon.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Impeccable descent, no discontent when his hands bury into splanchnic gore, rearrange her core to understand his every proclivity, terrible conductivity in electrical testimony, whispers against her liver their portent.

Give me your teeth, she says, consume it all.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Immaculate consumption to #devour her right on through, careful precision is the scalpel of grief, how quickly Death's scythe sweeps our love into eternity. Her heart hemorrhaging, heavy under the intangible,
the sunroom lit up by the morning,
empty.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The family home is manicured, a garden magazine cover, #yard so perfect, a crafted place for their dead. How beautiful are the Creeping Phlox, the night roam for the red fox to cackle omen as the murdered till to the flowers in the dark.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Destroy me, annihilate the very essence of my bones. Give unto me the gift of nothing. It pulls to #reach, licks her insides, warns her of intrigues, of tides twisting future. There's a hum electric, a vibration in her confines, the end the end the end of it all.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The clouds hang low, #lazy in their smoke, threads apparition silk. Hazy are the mountains in the morning, suffocates the light before bringing the world on through. The girl waits for the first ribbon of sun to head on home, clutching her little book of wonders.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He watches the ocean, #always dancing, crafting waves in a collision of passion and his heart breaks. Time does not heal all things when you carry a ghost, memories guillotine close, sharper then in California. She whispers she loves him, pulling him under entirely.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Alligator mouth, all teeth behind that pout, where she knows only to bare her smile in the dark. Daylight petulance, moonlight decadence, she rarely eats in their presence, when she is starving, visceral in voracity, aches for blood on the canines. They mustn't know.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The phone swings from the receiver as she sinks to the floor, hears someone on the line #ask, 'Ma'am?' before she's pulling the cord free from it's place, punctuates the space a silence before she screams,
her pretty throat red,
chrysanthemums for the dead.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her tears are choked, the #walls patterned and misery-soaked, listens to her plangent mourning, the morning after. She thinks of the blood on the shag carpet, the preacher at the funeral pulpit, the stains on the hardwood missing, where he is a casket empty.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

His eyes are that #hazel hue when they should be that seaside blue, drunk on the ocean curls, those strawberry blonde twirls against her star-lit body. The pier protests the tide, he holds her all coconut rum and ferris wheel rides, wants to love her under the moon.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Their lives are a quilted #prophecy, snipped life fabric and made whole. To bring things together, all the minutiae perforated aether, breathes the stars alive. Blips in constellations, spreads in the tarot, they are always reaching for the truth, their cosmic name.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

There's a decision to be made, #contemplative in seconds longing, begging for precision, grasps the skin that blade gleaming, screaming for sacrifice. It is how all things end— evisceration of soul from body, a mess of something bloody, smudged for the color crush.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

When words spill from her mouth, they are a lilt, heard #oval in the manifest, a sound colored cream and just as soft. She speaks little, profundity in creation, how she wishes only to make right what she has made wrong, wrong, it is all wrong, omen in articulation.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

When you find her in #Eden, tell her the story of man. Tell her how they burn bright, they burn through, and they can take her with them. That she, too, is a star brilliant, loved endlessly by the garden given, curated. And tell her, please, that she isn't alone.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

I want you to tear me in two, deliver me.

She’s drowning, swirling #hunger burning, climbing vines tendrils in her stomach, speaking of infatuation flowing fallible— but she’s not in it to care about mistakes; she just wants to be decimated, born eclipse and eradicated.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A gnashing of colors filter through a cigarette burn movie reel, negative to negative, across her skull. She can see herself still dressed rock n' roll, radiant skin, fangless. It eats at her #identity, of what she's made of—no one truly knows.
No one truly knows.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

They're running close, defied by the forest path riddled with trees, holding the clicking song of a #nightjar in the canopy. At the water's edge, their presence startles the surface, ripples making known the notion of passage. A lantern punctuates the dark across.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is alight with #frisson, fingers on bone, cartographer division, left taxidermy, a specimen pinned, nothing more than a beautiful thing tucked into a box on display. He places his hands on her unmapped ribs, conquers her spaces only because he has permission.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is a King appointed by the heavens, #pronouns fluid in her audience, avenged in sevens, the crown haloed upon her head. Closing her eyes, she can see the wheels of fate turning, burning Ophanim, echoes where she will carry out fate, and guide them all with her.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The words tumble dark and furioso, her hands finding way to her face to rub any stress from her features. She can smell the phantasm of #blood beneath the guise of lavender soap. Things like this are easy when she’s alone, when there are only dead bodies in the room.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The tiny vampire sits in the floor, wrapped in a nightgown #chaste, when the camera pans, exposes her vertical, licking her fingers free of the gore. It leaks into the fabric, taints it ivory to trophy murder, behold. She sighs, dissatisfied in the mess she has made.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Dead girls don’t #blush. There’s only the metal wire static in her chest, rushes up and over her face, icicle scalp scalpel, winter bleed in her skull. It saves her the way God cannot, descension for the tension and she wants to tell him how she'll eat him alive.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It sings in her a #vein injection, medicinal selection when his shadow is cast red, a neon haze filament, something in umbral exigence, aphonia in the dying of her larynx. She stands there, awaiting a sermon delivery, hearts beating furiously in stigmata silence.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

His cranium a mess when she steps forward, warns of a portent storm when her #fever hands, all rebirth ooze alchemical, grip his jaw. Teeth clench, gut wrench, wallowing in his own plight, victim, torn ligament, repetitive movement, a cruel exercise in overextension.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He plucks the #ukulele, threads the music over his calloused fingertips, tempered by sand and sea to play a melody yearning for something far in the blue. It speaks in endless summers, the coastal wash of waves, softens the homesickness for a place he's never been.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Carmine, saccharine, cloying is the color of #envy, the red of his eyes when he's given orders. He'd love to paint the other man infinity, stretched canvas and
obliterated.
Gasoline between his teeth, he wants to bite flint for the spark, burn them all to ashes.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She kisses him slow, without her emergency code, fervency ode where her hands linger #lovelorn, all the things between them torn

away.

And he knows, he knows, holds the curve of her waist minute, barely there as are his lips, eager to grace her cheek in apology.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A pact made, signed #despair and cemetery rite, the glow in that palms ease, just as the witch foretold. They listen for the end horrible screech of days gone dusk, but it does not come. No, it is a lullaby soft, perfect.

It is their mother.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She holds the ends of her necklace, #lobster clasp deliverance when she hears fighting downstairs. Dropping the pendant, she hurries towards the window, cracked and listening.
”I need you,” a prayer, when he swings from the eave to catch her wrist.
”You got me.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He swears himself #ally, fist to chest, lion-born and noble, knelt beneath the hover of her blessed hands.
“Don't be so formal,” the Queen whispers, reverent in her lack of smile. Heart strings tug for their friendship, hallowed is their secret place in the meadow.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She holds her fire-set heart, the #torch lit long before she was ever fathomed in this timeline. It threatens to curl inwards, to die right there, but she can feel her lover's promised hands, how they clutch her, paint her soul in vivid colors real. She is never alone.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

They're a #tornado whipped up violence, breaking of skin to whisper in the rain. Pink droplets over hard jawlines, softens the blood, the muscle, with eyes long tired for home.
But they're alone,
alone in their devastation,
with nothing but salt in their wounds.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A hand outstretched, palmed destiny and written in red, begs him to #trust her when she takes a step back further into the deep.
“I want to show you what it looks like,” down there, where her mind sleeps.
“Okay,” he whispers, slips his hand into hers and believes.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A heart to #dispose, a silent lament enclosed in a tiny wooden box.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is a girl buried, smothered under the moonless sky, refuse to #tarnish, refuses to be just so. Her name a sound, a bell tone that bleeds through the night, sends them all to trembling when they know she has a god on her side. A god who blessed her with a name.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

On her knees, altar please, blue in the dark, she looks at him holy, an answer to her prayers in half #faith, half words whispered into pillows before sleep. He’s a living dream, star-carved and solar flare, her medicinal sunshine in a hospital bedroom.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her fingertips hover just above the surface, touches his skin in dappled ripples, reverberates through his lattice work— knockout prim, seraphim, #Eros in song, arrow to puncture, divide him at the seams where she can see all her clockwork mechanisms toiling away.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Choked up on hungry notions of memories flirting, her mother steps over her body, distorts the fluorescence and holds out her hand, Get up, now. She can see her face through the #cascade of hair, the bright blue of her eyes— she has her mother’s eyes.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Salacious serenade, words enough to #abrade her marrow, hold her dove-throated, vivisection, pick apart her insides to consume every piece. Absolution in fate, how the moon speaks to the sea, he tells her he loves her heavenly, as his hands make good with the devil.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Sharing silence, the two women sign contracts in the locking of their eyes, discission without discussion, sealed wax and tied bow. Murder in ministry, taught subtle in the urgency of gaze, of hands hidden. Neither know how, but death finds a way.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Something calls conjure, ceremony summon when he blesses her lips a holy dread in tissue gore #sacrifice. They’re all alone in this defined disaster, crucified mess in the wake of a three-day funeral, and surely there will be flowers at the end of all of this.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

{The devil can’t hear you out here.}
Her soul returns to the vampire she’s holding onto #loving, knowing her trials, her hardships, seeks to lift them from her ventricles to breathe anew, riding the light in her. A frequency only the two of them share, quiet and gilded.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She aches, teeth biting edges as her teeth glitter in anguish. Her heart swells with the #tension in her skull, rigid mandible, a tremor in her spine infecting her shoulders as she quivers overwhelmed, heaved in the tide of confusion and too much, just too much.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She wants to know his sundown shadows, #sinister tides, but oh how her anger divides, traumatize, left forked sinner with naught to her name. Ripple silk slip, hates her yesterdays, but tomorrow you can change the world. Tomorrow, you can change everything.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

They’re a cosmic chiral, bloomed paint a fraction difference; sun-kissed sun spots to her smooth alabaster, a seaside swath to seismic ebony, straight shot raven for brown loose furl, all leather and fishnet against #steam-pressed suits.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The union is an explosive matrimony of cosmic atom vibration, collision nuclear in mushroom cloud blast to tear in radius below, lifted suspension into the ripple beyond. #Sound is tangible here, sights taste like colors and she cries out in purgatory deluge, grasping.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Bubbles beneath the surface, salt-sick corrosion causes his sailor heart to #tarnish, hurry, hurry, there are sharks in the water. A gold coin to pay the fare across, he bites back his ail, that wayward sail sinking below where his love will go to find her again.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

God’s #wrath permeates all, brings unto sinners a violent end with the spear of his light, and goddamnit she doesn’t care. It’s gone, she’s gone; only the haze of whatever brain stem dreamscape this is remains. Hellfire blaze of glory, gory, bloodied and unforgiven.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is what she needs to be— a night terror pulled fairytale #fright in her murderous mouth, the soul-stealing of her hands. Her body melts unto black, a spilling of formation into hallowed silhouettes, swallowed whole in Lilith’s blessing in the moonshine swath.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is a girl #indigenous, born in a catacomb, a place she calls her home, in the shadows speaking to spiders decorating the sockets of skulls long there. The place her people rest, to rise again around fires where they dance, shudder the burial grounds alive.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He whispers, #rakes her insides to leave them bare, for him to contaminate, where she refutes, stagnate, wants only to know her wretched routines. But he will show her the way, through her spine, vertebral anatomical tincture, a home remedy marked with his name.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A #river, babbling brook in her solar plexus, begs for release, pushes between the rocks, carving out a space all her own. Destined for greatness, as they say, a sword clutched to lead her people, blessed scripture burned in her temples. She hears them all.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

They're a tête-à-tête, something to behold in the temblor of her shoulders, quiet fête shared in their divisional spaces, so close and frictional, they might catch fire. And they oughta burn blue, the brightest hue here in the confetti of city lights, a haunted halo.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Dead for dying, sepulcher allay, she is something other, godless, #ally to none. Consopite confines, she is restless in the dark, cynorexic and moon-carved for the living where she is not. She breathes, topographic veins exposed, starved for insolation grace— denied.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The mansion is stunning, aristocratic #allure in the exceptional one-of-a-kind pieces, attention to detail, how the carvings on the wall speak of the end, but they're all gilded heaven sure. She knows, she knows their lies, and smiles along with them just the same.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Life on death, sun on moon collision of cosmic screaming in their marrow. It transcends to #burrow into her skin morbid, like fingers in a gore-stained red haze of neon through the window testament to scripture, prophet portent in the hum of tubes.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

They shiver with a knowing of the tide in their bones, licked madness with the means to devour. The end is nigh, sick in the guts of burned corpses given offering, to #coil the essence of the other side with teeth wide and dripping. Time ticks slow in yearning.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The air hangs heavy in waiting as she #quivers in fear, withered down to bone. Confess to all of us your sins, the sensation of eyes on her back causes her to tense beneath him, pinned butterfly flutter still alive to an unseen audience. It is only the beginning.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The young woman is stitched at the seams once more to stave off bursting, clutching #vim in her hands made abomination wrath, something to keep the demons away.
“I'll find them.” A promise, nothing weak on a threat.
“I believe you will. Give 'em hell when you do.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A tombstone arch for her necrographer spine, she's blooming #foxglove and just as clever. Ribs a nest, bird song in the night, a warning for those near and listening. Convex to concave, she breathes in ancient dust to renew bloodlines of old, a greenhouse menagerie.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

When he speaks, her body is a #soundscape, reverberating all the way through to her darkest confines, lights it up, a parting of clouds after a storm. It takes hold, lets her sing back in echoes, murmurs, something woodwind orchestral to plays him a symphony.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Queen; yes, she’s honey sweet in the hive, viscous drip thick, sticky stain between his fingertips, his eyes roll when this image kisses him, touches him alive in an electrical dance fuzzy on this fever dream intravenous and potent.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The words feel strange when they leave her mouth, tastes like déjà vu. There’s a pause as the beach boy shoves his vape back into his pocket, pulling himself from the #balcony edge, “I'm going to call it a night.” '
”Okay.” I love you.
“I’ll see you.” I love you, too.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Their #truce comes to ruin the moment she leans in to kiss him.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The #haar blends, curls into spirals like confectionery, funeral veils hail Mary, hung heavy over the face of the coast ashamed. Her hair whips against the evening raven, leaves her a wraith, terrifying, but the vampire is quiet, soft even, in salt-spray sighs.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Avarice palms steals the monster right out of her. Severed serpent, hydra, so many working parts, teeth, heel to skull, this is it. Alexander in his throne comedic, mania mad and consumed, how stupid she feels for her weakness in acceptance. Who’s laughing now?

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She comes to pieces soft, #petals scattered after a morning storm, wilts the edges on the morrow. Here, she smothers her sorrows where her dreams electrify, an ocean of tenderness in the cotton of threadbare sheets.

She mourns, ever so tired, “I can't save them.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

His is ghost #vituperative, clings to her day in, day out, screaming, reminds her of her mistakes and how she continues to fail.
“You're nothing with out me,” he bites.
”And you're nothing without me,” the girl whispers, plucking his spectral hands from her ankles.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

An organ plays a harrowing song mystified along #stone walls, camera narration to move between the pews and up towards the face of the Lord crucified, teardrop on his face in the pain he takes so willingly for his flock.

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Failure under moonlight, she understands the way it shreds, thins the insides frail to fracture, digs deeper each time. It comes out 'I’m sorry', something to soften the blow when the bruise still blossoms to purple, kisses lavender to pansy, throbs all the same.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She persists in #spite of when the whole world is against her and he believes in the entirety of his heart that she deserves happiness where it’s so damn hard to find. Where she fights to live even when she feels she has nothing to live for, and that sure is something.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The lake breathes, steam coming off of the surface like soul ascension, leaves salt-slick ravines on their skin.
He twists the #oar, pushing the other side, guiding them slowly through the forest.
“Do you think we'll see her?”
”We might see more than just her.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She bites into him ferocious, #ermine in confidence, smaller by comparison, but it doesn't matter. The body gives way to gurgling, sputtering from the side of his neck as she stands there, meat spat from between her teeth, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The mirror breaks, set to #disarm her haunted reflection from possessing her entirely.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Out into the Oregon cold, she's dressed against the grain with a spiked leather jacket to #feign any semblance of warmth. “Put some clothes on,” the ghost seethes. She pulls an unlit cigarette to her lips and lights it, cherry burn, burns her all the way through.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It's the second time he's told her today, #generous in how his heart gives way, mouth a marionette on chordae tendineae. Someone told him the more you say it, the more it loses its power, but oh, he disagrees. No such thing as too many blessings in a world like this.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Something #vacillating between where music dies slowly and the synaptic frequency is going, tongue-tied and mortified by whispers that come with the gift. There despite the fear, bleeds through into the living world as much as you believe it, bearing secrets of old.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

#Banish me, send me back into the fold to be made again, to be whole again in nebulous watercolors. Tell me you love me, so that I may find you once more in the next life, bring about the tides of the moon under the stars. Don't worry, I'll always find a way back.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

They're caught in a spider web spiral, threads suffused in the spaces where the light does not catch, doesn’t gleam that silk shine a glistened warning, snags even the smallest parts to doom. It's an eerie calm, a haunting of a #storm just at the end of the world.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She's painted war, strung up darling, gallery-clad pièce de résistance in his daybreak hands. Blood slips over her clavicle, rich acrylic, teeth gleaming vicious when she leans. But he pulls her in, carmine union horrible, beautiful, artistic divination manifest.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

In the silence, her heart outweighs what her tiny form can hold. So she seeps into the floor, wilting, ever melancholy in the empty home, a home that no longer houses them, only serves as a reminder that squeezes her atrial, blood-stain emergency on her ribcage.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The #adventure of her fingers around his face ignites him horripilation hallelujah, sends her to smiling, because she knows what she's up to. “
I'll tell you a secret, if you promise not to say anything.”
He's quiet, smiles in their venerated space.
”I love you.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Bodies are moving, licked liquor and sequin dreams. They're here for the #drama, the crescendo, of the hearts on their sleeves desperate for sweet words, a soft touch. But the night is visceral, something on the horizon, and every single one of them wants a taste.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The #steed approaches alone, reigns slack on its neck, saddle empty and God only knows the horrors those black eyes have seen. She's tired despite the might of her form, breathes heavy as she stops before the door.

“Where have you been, Miss Daisy? What happened?”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It is her truth, the punctuation, perforation on his wrist, blessed #virtue for healing the damage on his skin. Running the pad of her finger over each wound, his muscles tense, but he allows her anyway.
”I got a little out of hand,” she admits.
“Who says that matters?”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

I know you ail, whimper in the night alone, how you toss and turn in vicious dreams. Where is this fate you #repudiate? I'm here. I hear you, know all the love in that heart of yours, but you won't share your faith. How can I mend the broken if they don't believe?

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The mirrors are set on either side and center, looking at each other, spilling her image #duplicative over into oblivion. They're different to what she looks like, but all echo her words the same— she knows the answer before the question.
”When can I [eat] him?”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Something for the grave, a #toadstool tragedy in dusk, quietly buried with no one to mourn them. But someone does mourn when they feel their heart break for seemingly nothing at all. They're falling apart in the seize, to hold themselves like flowers hold the sun.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

They move #frenetic, synaptic frequency hectic, the oscillation of hands on skin to part fabric, goddamn. It's all in the way their hearts beat frantic, holy come the rain, it's about to pour. Dire, hungry, dying in the fire, but they'd be a pyre burning beautiful.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Ain’t this all God’s plan anyway? It’s happenin', happenin' all at once. You know in the way you look at the ceilin', feel for the stars, #hope that someone's listenin’. The devil listens, too, but he ain’t up there no more. You can see him in them eyes, cain’t you?

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

His hand sits at the base of her skull, tugs her closer for her hair to #swing, plume around dahlia, a contractual veil for just the two of them. “
I like you like this,” he breathes.
“Like what?” She hovers still, so proximal, waits for his blessing.
”Sharp.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

There’s a mechanism working in the confines of her skull where her heart leaps metaphor, one hand out of the grave for him and him alone. A flurry of confession behind that seaside #gaze, an explosion of prayer in the twisted spaces of her iris. He’s worth praying for.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Their arms are reaching, dripping spectral ooze that curls into wisps. Aching are their #covetous hands for the power of her words, spoken unto both the living and the dead. She stops towards the waters edge, crouches anuran as she listens.

“I'll tell them. I promise.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

“I can’t leave you alone,” whispered #melancholy, “but I’ll turn my back.” There’s a pause where she thinks to breathe, levels with her a look earnest, but quieter, “Don’t listen to either of them. Listen to your own truth, whatever that is. Just don’t listen to them.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Lightyear sigh when a star dies some #million years ago, leaves something empty in the whole of their palms, his line of fate erased— He was never meant to be here. But she reasons the line is gone 'cause he is fate, pulling them all through.
She reasons, she reasons.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her eyes are that #glacier blue and just as heavy, watching every inhale-exhale stutter of his lungs, breathing excitations, prayer sublimations from portent to manifest destiny. It spears through her heart, how he looks at her like she might be the end of the world.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her body is blessed milky way, needle-pricked cosmic, sprinkled caramelized sugar. He traces her collarbone with his finger, guided by the stars, slow to #circumnavigate away from her shoulder to cup her face.
“Tell me what it's like to speak in constellations.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The air hangs #reticent, poignant fuzz in their lack thereof, mute and desperate to be elsewhere. They stand statues, waiting for the other, the hairline fracture of their eyes glimpsing, giving them permission to go. And they do,
away, away,
in opposite directions.
══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

An #endless stream of consciousness weaves through her here in purgatory, the whispers of constant begging, pleading for some audience from the living. But she is just as useless as they are, ripped consecration for desecration, pulled limbo for the sake of silence.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her dreams #coalesce, twisting the threads of fate in red.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He's overcome, a #sea in the well of his eyes as his knees dig into the pier, his hands, he doesn't know what to do with his hands in the wake of the phone call. Heartbreak, soul ache, he is capsized, sinking at the break of dawn, and there is no one to save him.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She appears #demure in the way she holds her hands together in her lap, a doll perfect and beautiful. But they all know the horror of her mouth, a monstrosity when she speaks of the future, their terrible destiny, and what she will do. A force of nature dressed in silk.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

“Don’t worry too much.” Her words taste like a ghost when she leans into his hands.

He doesn't #resist, accepts it unto grace, for she is that idol he holds in his palms, with all of her mercy, ferocity in being, pulled into existence in what Fate holds for them.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

There's a cacophony in the canopy, branches devoid of #leaves in the winter crush collide in the wake of an oncoming storm. “
We should get going,” he says shivering in his Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts.
”You cold?” The vampire grins.
”Shut up, dude.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He touches her #face smooth, hums electric in the tips of his fingers, folded into the unique etch of his fingerprints. And she thinks maybe she is different in the incarnation chiral blot if all bodies hover in those minute differences. Oh, how they belong here.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Starlight footprints on a #prairie tells the flowers where to bloom. Inhale the sighs of old, told in the tossing of rocks and bones, find where they lie and believe what they tell you. Listen, listen to the bubbling of brooks, and you’ll hear how you were born.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her skull is a grail, filled #tenebrous with lilac dreams, spills
o
v
e
r
the beauty of neural inclinations, makes even her darkest places feel like home.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He paddles out from the shore, watches her in the distance, standing on her board waiting for the wave. Reverence in the bleed of her hair a halo, the ocean curls over him, pushes him
below,
below,
where the #plankton go to sleep.

And he dreams of her there, too.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is thief #nimble, upholds the silence with a knife to his throat.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She's all that hell hath a human heart, #chimera split right from the start, a fiery maw and hips just as dangerous. Divided into three, holy trinity, there's no room for spirit when she's dead. But she still speaks the scripture, just enough to make the skin burn.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A clamor of #thunder,
crashing,
crashing,
code blue, [clear]— better now than to let a wound fester, amputation sever, septic, venom in the blood, (suck it out) corrodes to decay, mushroom foray for the casket drop. Don't stop, you're almost alive.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He's dressed for Abbadon, expensive suits with brocade threaded into beautiful patterns that make your fingers itch for the needle. Unholy in the red of his eyes, blessed Lilith on that gilded throne, a #king without a crown. And she wonders what he sees in the mirror.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

His name a #cathedral, blessed stained glass and memories.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The EXIT burns neon red. There’s only one way out and that’s through. Through the gates laced ash or honey-river gold, a #kingdom judgement gavel in the morbid choking of the death rattle, twenty-one grams lighter— the weight of a soul or the weight of the world?

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She wants that image of him in the sun to brand heliogravure behind her eyes, #exposed negative to burn the edges, vignette. And she sees him in the daylily swathe, cradled through the blinds of morning, cut into pieces blessed magic, lay her skin to waste.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The chandelier crystals bounce off the light in fragments, flitters unto the mirror to split once more, puts her all over, hung in rainbow glitter to serve her #vanity, something like a reckoning before she ever leaves the room. A blessing, she thinks, from the stars.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Here, she is the #quotidian reminder. Here she is nobody, but a girl with a forked tongue, fanged teeth, and a silly name. And they love it, fall into habit when they make dates on their Fridays, their Saturdays. She is always surrounded, but predator solitary.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Head shake to spin the world ‘round, emulsify horror for hallelujah, give him a break, anxious on his own tread.
—I’d want you to be #happy if I wasn’t here
I can’t be the only light in your heart—
[But it sure is dark without you]

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her heart ails beneath the weight of his absence, something medical, intravenous, let the world #spin. She searches for him in the folds of her sheets, refolds the envelope he left her, he left her.
Don't say you love me, her ribs concave, I can't stand the aftertaste.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her eyes #engage, something whispered behind those pupils, all hawk hone and dangerous.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The room is suddenly replaced by low booths and smooth #jazz, so separated by the bass of the club, so riddled with magic. The patrons look up, eyes covered, averted, whispers between people unlike those heart-hung serenades out on the dancefloor.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He tastes like lapis, bathed #twilight incandescence, bleeds hydrangeas in the daylight of his eyes and she thinks she can see the sun. Like a fine powder morning, perfect and confectionery, he's that honey dipped lavender, gives her heart something to beat about.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A feather slides across her frontal lobe to #tickle a memory, olfactory, the scent of jasmine and cherry blossoms. She's got a fever now, urgent in her stretch down the hall hurrying, hurrying, because by God, she knows that smell.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The water curls, crests into #jade bleeding seafoam, spills time on the shore before returning to the sea. Footprints disappear, erased in tidal gnawing for the ocean knows no names, knows no titles. She only understands that she is and forever will be.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She is #haunted by the actions she does not take when she knows the outcome, afraid of power in rebellion, still only a nurse for the sick. A bedside comfort, needle prick sway, gauze before another surgical dissection.
Please, a patient whispers, the medicine.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

They're huddled in the umbral #camouflage, listening to their atrial orchestra in tandem.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The #arrow threads through her heart like silk, a doe murdered softly where birds still sing their day song. She's on her knees, stained soil where she is a garden, aching to be alive, and she is, she is when he tells her every little thing with love in his mouth.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

There’s a sensation of ultimatum, of #finality in this house and she knows what she has to do. The man in front of her is dressed in a suit and she knows him, understands him. Her eyes open, haze of vision still swirling in her cranium and she’s dying to open the door.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She's his California dream, the jostle of her strawberry curls, her skin pricked constellation atlas, guides them all home.
'Let's go to the beach,' he grazes his fingertips on her cheek.

And oh, how he'd pray to be granted #serenity if he knew what tomorrow held.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It suffocates slow, ribcage crush, but her lungs are useless now. Like her heart, heavy and worthless, better off for a fairy ring feast somewhere in a forest, buried #vermicious consumption, epitaph scribed on the crumbling edges of a tree snapped in a summer storm.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She can taste that cherry ooze, lemonade sugar sour that shuffles #ice when it melts against the glass, savory sweat in a summer hum cicada symphony. The world sighs a little colder when the sun hides, the vampire can feel it in her bones—it's all downhill from here.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A child laughs in a haunted #memory not her own.
I beg you, don’t take her from me.

Cigarette smoke lingers in a bar lit neon haze, purple lights in the corner of the room. A man eats dinner alone.
I don’t understand.
What is there to ever understand?

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Our proximal divide, by a #quarter and half again, only makes me whole.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Obsequious in fear of the unknown— suffocate the evil, evil where she doesn’t quite know the rules, evil misunderstood, evil unquiet. An era selcouth for one girl with ancient remedies undiscovered, connections forgotten yet experienced, #lonely where she is not.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She’s stamped envelope seal, blood rush, headrush, river run down clavicle stretch, a murder scene between those teeth. There’s the taste of his fingerprints on her tongue, #dessert all conjured up AB negative, photo negative in a darkroom awaiting chemicals.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A gorgeous #hearth sat stone in the wall across the thrones burns, burning her last bit of patience. It is in the middle of summer, for fuck's sake, and the inclination of fire sends a vampire to sweating. Just a mask of being in control. She hates every bit of it.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The anvil #strike of grief rings true, muddles her emotions a tidal wave crashing cliffside, falls back into the sea. Quakes her insides as she sleeps, dreams of love and loss, so close to wedding bell chimes, but there's a living room ceremony now, doused in blood.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

“You’re coming in, right?” Her #heart swells and she knows who she’s talking to, skinny dipping on the morning twilight lavender fade. Goosebumps on her skin, tremble in her elbows, water-splash-gasp as she sinks one step lower into the deep. “Don’t be chicken.”

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

He allows her to be seen without scrutiny, past the technicolor warp of her brain blasted radio frequency. A lighthouse in the storm that she is, she breathes in his sunshine #scent to exhale a garden, blooming, bursting dew budding life, bokeh come into focus.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

There are memories tucked away in the hardwood of the old #cottage, splintered, tired from age and neglect. The kudzu creeps through a broken window, steals the love right out of the flower bed. Laughter echoes, a time gone by, but no less grace in this empty space.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It shivers in your solar plexus, star light weaponized to #reject the dark, hark, I'll tell you a secret. Give unto me your capitulation faith, your heart, the way you quiver under umbral tides. I will lay them all to waste for you. Shh, just give me your name.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

But he’s all that sunshine frequency, sunburst ultraviolet, sends shivers down the #curve of her spine like she’s warmed from a fire, prickles instinctual for the flame. She’s too cold for goosebumps, but he gives them to her much the same.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

We found you. Can’t you hear us calling you?
Who?
Just listen, there’s symmetry to all this nonsense
Chiral spill, casket drop, a widow mourns her dead
The click of a receiver, tears fall
#Valiant
We found you
The phone is ringing, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up—

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She’s nothing, he’s something, cosmic, grips that flatlined muscle and she wonders, if it burst, would it paint them red or gold? Maybe #silver, moonstone glimmer— they’d be dripping iridescent, debauched in their worship, sighing together in a dream-soaked mattress.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Spectral hands come crawling in fervor from the forest floor, gripping terrible as their bodies hit the ground, harrowed in confusion as they drag
down
down
down
when the skin starts to split, expose muscle unto bone with #ululation collapsed into desperate lungs.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She's that rock and roll rumble, a split tongue and one inch gauges in her #earlobes, leather jacket that feigns any semblance of warmth. Hellfire baby, I'll show you warmth, because it glitters all the same. Take a photo, keep me close— you'll wanna remember this.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Survival of the fittest, one might say, the issue of a wayward soul wanting a body, a demon wanting a body, threads twining cosmic incarnations. But as she speaks incantation, the little mirror cracks under the weight of a #sonorous exhale made through pressured evil.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

The tension makes his jaw blanch, something #bitter in the mouth, tastes like disease. It corrodes in her phantom heart flutter where he knows her true, understands the methods of a broken heart. There is no way to prepare them for what might happen.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

All eyes on her, scopaesthesia manifest, raises the hair on her neck. She can see herself there in the steam-swiped glass, level, whole yet so separated— frequency electric, a memory that rattles her #prison, reminds her of her failures.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

In the throes of her own fugue, all an overlay unreal, she wants to destroy those horrible parts of herself. The #doppelganger is smeared lurid, laughing as it holds her lover, murdered and silent. She bludgeons the mirror into p i e c e s.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her loneliness is a rainbow metastasized in finger paint pollution, stitched together with empty spaces, purgatory, black on black with a #glimpse of color. All the workings of something gallery clad, strung and hung, weighs heavy on the heart if you look too long.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A single #leaf on muddied ground, war torn and desolate, quivers in the penumbral swathe of dusk, light to cleave the forest in two. A silence held between them, apex and sure, as they wait
wait,
for the howl beyond to guide them home.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Her mind detonates into a flurry of color, spirals of images, sound, ghost hands all over. She swallows blood, it tastes sublime, supper #wine in unholy climbing, reaching for the stars to burst, a daydream blown nebula, milky way plume in the confines of her cranium.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Incantation spoken on a split tongue, damned language #verboten, sends shivers down her cadaver spine. A chorus of voices slip ventricle, consume her empty spaces, a whisper of faces in the back of her chalice skull. They have a message. Shh, now, they're speaking.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She says his name, vocal cords struck #quaint, faint, that chromatic movie reel classic, channelized static to pull her into color, heart stutter, she might say it one more time. But she holds it in her sternum, plants it for a garden, morning dew glisten, just listen—

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

"He thinks of her under the moon, lily bleed for the gravitational pull, tiny constellations on her salt-slick skin. Strawberry blonde, messy #ponytail just before they paddle out, the ghost of her spinal arch in waiting for the waves, he is crushed beneath her tides.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Wolf teeth in her spine, she’s all apex when she wants to be. Predator visionary in the explosion of pigmented space of her #iris, winter blue and cold to the touch. The summoning of murder in those hands of hers, reading palmistry— what does her destiny line tell you?

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Here he comes through the front door, because of course, all threaded sutures of damask and brocade on a vest cut glory and hellified with sharp suits surrounding him. She imagines them #tawdry instead, printed theatrical fabrics, laughable, end scene.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

I buried you
Coagulation cologne, demons on the phone, #conundrum dial tone to a voice that doesn’t ring true to memory. It hangs skin damp, a hook caught for her to reel, but it fights and swims against the pull.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

A mirror surreal, the image of her hovers #perpendicular, whispering feverishly,

dontwakeupdontwakeupdontwakeupdontwakeup.

Something thuds in the room behind her.

No, she doesn't want to look, but she does.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

Half second, halfway delirium, everything a fraction, light in the dark, magnify to spark that calamitous bass, raises her some #idol, some false begotten god. She’s all eyes on him until she isn’t, eyes slipping back into her skull, cranial bleed stain glass glacial

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

She's listening to the #conversation, heavy and whispered, on the other side of the room.
"You’ll just have to love enough for the both of us."
And she can. She will.

══════ ∘◦❁◦∘ ══════

It seeps visceral, something #colossal and felt wholly, holy, pulls dopamine on the brain stem sublime for excellency, roadomancy, tell us what the stars say.