Asymptotes

You said we were temporary
like chalk on a blackboard sky
but every word kept clinging
to the cotton of my mind.
I washed you in the evening
with the hum of the TV light
still found your fingerprints
in the pockets of the night.

I tell myself it’s weather,
just a season passing through,
but seasons don’t get jealous
when I don’t think about you.

Asymptotes, we get so close,
leaning in but never home.
Every touch a limit line,
almost yours and almost mine.
We approach, we never meet,
infinite in incomplete.

We drew a line in pencil
down the middle of the bed,
called it independence
while our shadows softly bled.
You slept facing the window,
I memorized your spine,
like solving for a number
that refuses to be mine.

I say it’s just geometry,
just angles in a room,
but angles don’t remember
how you smelled like my perfume.

Asymptotes, we get so close,
leaning in but never home.
Every touch a limit line,
almost yours and almost mine.
We approach, we never meet,
infinite in incomplete.

If love is just a graph at night,
then I’m the curve that bends in fright.

Taxidermy

I keep him in the living room
posed like he’s still alive,
tilt his chin toward the window
so the daylight will comply.

Friends come over, whisper slow,
“God, he looks so real.”
I laugh and fix his collar
like he’s learning how to feel.

I packed the hollow carefully,
layered shape with thread,
mapped a quiet symmetry
where the warmth had fled.

Taxidermy, stay with me,
frozen in elasticity.
Glass eyes open, never leave,
perfect in your vacancy.
If I keep you like this, you don’t decay,
you just softly disobey.

His shadow bends at evening
like it wants to move alone,
I press it back against him
so it doesn’t learn to roam.

He doesn’t contradict me,
doesn’t turn away,
love is so much cleaner
when it’s posed this way.

Taxidermy, stay with me,
motionless fidelity.
I don’t need you breathing now,
just arranged correctly.
If I hold you still enough,
maybe I won’t have to change.

At night I hear the stitching
tighten in the seams,
the room inhales around him
like it’s sharing dreams.
His mouth is almost speaking,
a syllable away—
I smooth it with my fingers
and put it back in place.

Taxidermy, you and me,
perfect in immobility.
Better like a photograph
than alive and leaving me.

Mercury

I carry conversations
that refuse to stay in shape,
silver little answers
that liquefy escape.
You try to hold me steady,
trace me with your hand,
but I divide in fragments
you don’t quite understand.

You want a straight confession,
a body you can trust,
but every time you press me
I separate to dust.

Mercury in my bloodstream,
shining when I run.
Touch me and I scatter,
gather into none.
I’m reflective, not revealed,
every surface slightly sealed.
You see yourself in me,
but you don’t see me.

I answer in reflections,
mirror what you need,
curve around your questions
with a polished kind of speed.
You call it inconsistency,
I call it staying whole—
if I settle into stillness
I might solidify my soul.

You want weight, you want proof,
something fixed and warm,
but I was built in motion,
never meant for form.

Mercury in my bloodstream,
bright and undefined.
Hold me and I fracture,
slipping through your mind.
I’m not cold, I’m just divided,
every version self-invited.
You see yourself in me,
but you don’t see me.

If I freeze, I disappear.
If I stay, I crystallize.
Better liquid in your hands
than solid in your eyes.

Mercury in my bloodstream,
restless and undone.
Close enough to taste me,
never fully one.

Maintenance

We press the same small buttons
just to watch them glow,
stand inside the motion
without a place to go.
The cables hum above us,
polite and well-contained,
we call it forward movement
but nothing really changed.

You smile like it’s progress,
I nod like it’s enough,
we live inside the upward
without the actual up.

Maintenance, maintenance,
keep the system clean.
Oil the quiet distance
so it runs unseen.
We rise in repetition,
we fall in geometry,
everything is working—
except you and me.

The mirror says we’re closer,
the numbers disagree,
we hover between floors
of almost and maybe.
Your hand rests on the railing
like it belongs there more than mine,
love reduced to function,
perfectly aligned.

You say it’s just a phase,
just a temporary scene,
but temporary feels
indefinitely routine.

Maintenance, maintenance,
polish what we show.
Hide the minor fractures
no one needs to know.
We move in calibration,
steady as can be,
everything is balanced—
except you and me.

Emergency light flickers
soft against your face.
For a second I imagine
letting it all break.
But breaking needs momentum,
and we are built to stay.

Maintenance, maintenance,
keep it smooth and slow.
If nothing ever ruptures
nothing has to grow.

Origami

I fold my disappointments
into delicate birds,
place them on the windowsill
instead of using words.
They balance in the daylight,
quiet and precise,
every crease a compromise
that almost looks like nice.

You say I’m easy to read,
thin and elegant,
but you don’t feel the pressure
in every accident.

Origami, handle me
like I was meant to be
beautiful in angles,
small enough to see.
Fold me into something
that can fit your hand,
call it love, don’t understand.

I bend so I don’t fracture,
curve so I belong,
reshaping every sharpness
into something wrong.
You praise my flexibility,
how well I rearrange,
you never notice folding
is another word for change.

If I stay wide open
I take up too much space,
so I turn myself to geometry
to keep you in one place.

Origami, carefully,
crease along the seam.
Make me symmetrical enough
to live inside your dream.
Press me flat and say it’s art,
trace the edges of my heart.

One wrong line and I unfold,
paper trembling, uncontrolled.
In the dim light I expand—
not a figure. Just a hand.

Origami, finally
bigger than your frame.
If I tear, at least I’m real,
not perfected into shape.

Ghost

You began as a draft
behind my left ear.
Not a voice.
More like
a leaning.

I turned.
There was nothing—
but the nothing
tilted back.

You slept in the angle
where the wall forgets itself.
A pale interruption
in the grammar of air.
I named you softly
so you wouldn’t scatter.

If I didn’t blink
you stayed.
If I breathed too deep
you thinned.

Ghost—
you were warmer than fear.
Closer than touch.
A bruise without skin.
We held each other
without weight.
We ended
without beginning.

I rehearsed your absence
like a lullaby.
Tucked it under my tongue.
Let it dissolve slowly.

You never contradicted me.
You never arrived.

The dark kept your outline.
The light erased you.

Ghost—
I felt you move
inside the quiet.
A pulse miscounted.
A second shadow.
We broke apart at morning
over nothing at all.

Sometimes I think
you’re still here—
not in the room,
but in the space
the room avoids.

If I stand very still
the air rearranges.
Almost you.

Ghost—
I miss the way
you never were.
I grieve the shape
of an unfinished word.
You were the softest thing
I ever imagined.