Carbon (Unstable)

This morning,
I awake to a series of cinnamon kisses,
born upon wet eyelashes.
These simple, cold-hearted,
choked tears trail
youthful, baptized skin.

Stained pillows shroud me like a martyred Christ.
Stigmata takes hold,
as crimson gravitates.
I have been medicating myself with time
and little drops of chemicals.

I move through the city and speak to a stranger.
He told me he’d forgotten how to fall in love,
that he remembered once how it felt,
but now it was a faded memory.
I couldn’t work out if he was the happiest
man I’d ever met.

I had to get back to the sea.
I ran
as fast as my worn-down legs could carry me,
across the bridge
where commuters flocked southwards.
I passed men throwing the news of the day’s misdemeanors
into dry palms.

The train rocked back and forth,
as newborn babies let out newborn screams,
and newborn mothers
attempted to find newborn calm.

My asthmatic lung partially filled with oxygen,
crystal beads of sweat poured down my body of tweed.
I was running from and to someone at the same time.
My legs pounded against concrete.
My legs pounded so hard, just to get to her.

I paint walls with rose-tinted shades,
inserting myself into another, just to get away.
I never let this body stop.
I will never let this body stop.

Ejected from the train, I ran faster,
through winding lanes,
just to look at trespassed eyes.
I scooped up hope and swallowed hard.
The pit of my stomach rumbled with desire.

I am once again moving in fifths.
I am moving, always, in fifths.
The horizon beckoned,
and I watch a man on the beach,
trying to catch stars from the sky.

He was running around as if a tin roof
on a dilapidated house was leaking.
I noticed about twenty buckets placed
strategically
on the floor.

There was a crowd gathering behind,
all pointing, mocking, laughing.
He wore a tattered raincoat, singed with burns,
and five days of stubble was etched wearily on his face.

His eyes were full of planets and desire,
of orbit and moons.
Slowly,
I approached one of the buckets.
It was overflowing with diamond-encrusted stars.

I was so overcome with emotion
I picked up an empty bucket
and joined his mission.

Now, I’ve drained myself of crimson.
I spend my evenings looking up to the heavens,
searching for little streaks of glitter,
and in the middle of the night,
I dive quietly into ocean skies.

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