birthdays big and small, birthdays short and tall, birthdays with cakes, birthdays with diamonds, birthdays on the moon, birthdays in aruba, birthdays in prisons during lock down, breakfast in bed birthdays, room filled catered birthdays, birthdays without notice, surprise birthdays, fiftieth birthdays, birthdays all alone, forgotten birthdays and birthday gifts without remorse.

in his company she has the neurotic fear of becoming normal again after the overwhelming feeling has passed again as she settles for him to fill this void in her when he cannot feel anything at all again and he stands there just stupid looking at her wishing he could figure her out figure what the fuck is she going on about again and she chews on her wrists and he just wraps his fingers around his own to protect them as if she was foaming at the mouth again and i wish i could just take a brick and smack him in the face with it over and over again until i break through the skin the muscle the bone and his eyes ogle me in the same stupid way he doesn’t know how to look at her to teach him how to fill the fucking void she’s left in me.

i kiss you on the ferris wheel but have no spit for it. you cough up your spleen for a prize as the strongman smashes it with a mallet. i had an itch in my heart and you cracked open my rib cage to scratch it. all these fall from grace, your hair burned upwards into the nostrils of clowns on stilts. the inner turmoil of a roller coaster abused for the final time and the languishing promises a funhouse can no longer deliver. you rubbed my knuckles across your teeth until there was only bone and we ate cotton candy until our lungs bled. spinning in tea cups our ears were flung at such velocity that they blinded children. everyone applauded the barker until their hands became swollen bruised and useless. but we had little money and less time to count all the tickets tucked under our tongues.

i break the silence in two. one half i put in her mouth, the other tucked under the pillow. in the morning i find rumpled sheets and petals from a flower i do not understand. she walks out of a room, the curtains hold back an angry sun. i cannot to bear to follow her down stairs that creak into forgetting. i rub my eyes to find grains of sand stitched into the corners. above me the ceiling sags and buckles while the walls bulge outward into the cold. the apartments below squeal with television sets that have never been turned off. i imagine her unlocking the door, a series of clattering metal tumblers and a knob that’s been loosened. my jaw sets itself against numb lips as the wind breaks through the window.

the tears are broken half mast stems shot at crooked angles out of the ground swelling the horizon as it rips across a lip of tethered spines sunk into my eyes as lashes braced for your kiss.

fizzle drizzle frazzle dazzle jigsaw rickshaw dizzy tizzy and shine. adore uproar cement ferment alight twilight table sable and shine. lucid putrid whisper blister cutting rutting broken spoken and shine. shatter batter mutter stutter crackle tackle crying prying and shine. oil toil meat beat heal steal night flight and shine.

hrmm

and and and she says the jar is broken and and he twists the sheets into knots and and the fire escape is made of rust and and and the panels have cracked where they are joined together and and and and and she cries when he leaves and and he cracks his teeth on the bottle and there’s a shattered window that no one pays attention to and and and and and when the wind howls he lights a cigarette and and she rips the pillows off the bed and and and and and there’s a stain on the floor there and she wouldn’t believe it and and and and the leaves whip through the air and and and his hands shake and she’ll have none of that and and and the blinds have a thin layer of dust and and and he cannot stop and on and on it goes