amy-derfer

I have to keep working night shifts because I’ve driven home through all these sunrises and I’ve still never seen the sky turn the same colors twice.  Like counting snowflakes till you can pair them up like socks, what does that word mean to you? Eternity.  Pretending our sun is more than just a black hole’s fetus.  I’m ready to be set on fire.  Come on…

I was spitting nails before we fell into it, maybe I still am.  Have you ever seen someone die from a nail gun?  There isn’t anywhere horror movies won’t go but we both know you don’t watch them so.. I have a past that still isn’t house trained, you dare to let him uncaged? I have too many teeth for you.   Not like pearls still suckling on the oyster, like whatever ends up killing you in your sleep, like a gift from an enemy – the way he smiles when he rings the doorbell, like waking up to discover all the trees are gone, the way the sun laughs at you then. Just exactly like how angry God gets at you when you

it's been clouds and clouds since you left coincidence a steel-tipped boot to the throat, my cheeks discarding embedded gravel before being whiplashed gutter-faced again. exhaustion forces the body to drip southward like sweat. I am too tired to feel the sun.

know your enemies dedicate songs to them, dance the last number with jealousy, a slow waltz, low murmured headrush lean against the doorframe, touch selfishness briefly on the mouth take anxiety home and leave quietly at dawn before he traces your spine and pulls you closer

inkletting instead of bloody wrists instead of heroin or coffee or smoke-stained fingertips. blue blood in bullet wounds across the page, evidence of demons exorcised

I can’t go crazy again.  I am building a pyramid, a massive tower of poorly balanced bricks.  Every relationship, every friendship, rides on this.  I cannot go crazy again.  Everything would fall. Rumi and Hafiz.  All the references to the Sun are what does it.  I am pushed back in time to two years ago. Wild with joy. I never felt it again.  Perhaps I never will.  To feel it would destroy my tower, now balanced through months of careful stacking. Everything used to make perfect sense, although to everyone else I was chaos incarnate.  Everything I do now is distraction.  I am a flicker on the water, refusing to look down into the de

my thoughts don’t seem to press well together, now a dirty tangle of threads instead of the once-bright tapestry.  I can’t think what picture must be woven, the one so clear to me a week ago today is dim as dreams, thick fog, impenetrable.  (I was somewhere else) or Soon, I will find myself waking up, shaking sweating and relieved.  I will pour myself into your arms.   “I had the worst dream....”  Reality will be blinding us, sunrise through picture windows.  This will not happen.  The only present-tense that weakens my eyesight is darkness. I feel my way through four hundred days, scrape my shin on five hundred and se

escape becomes worthless how ridiculous would you feel running away with no one chasing you down so test the ropes I was the last kid on the playground to learn to tie knots and you are not my kite dog or balloon-trapped helium don’t wait for me to bear-trap you tame you and me: the difference I’ve burned far too many prison cells to lock you up anywhere you’ve clipped enough wings to fear a cage from anyone you touch

her voice is cream over coffee, made unbitter carefully palatable eyes, twin snake-bites the most unfortunate of harsh beauties do not touch do not feed her teeth are the greediness of bear traps, she is lonely enough to never let go.