whiteout

i'll write out the cracks in my current sky
sitting outside with a giant sharpie,
trying to dot out pinhole stars
like it will ever be accomplished,
like i will magically stop
waking up crying over dreams i
can't remember.

4 am is far more sinister than 3,
because at 3 the potential for more
sleep can still tantalize you.
but 4 am is a famine and leaves you
desperate for more than two hours,
which is all you could get.

every old flame burns my unborn
baby into these charcoal sockets,
so if i wake up dry, i can find
something quick to cry about anyway.

brown curls. brown eyes everywhere.
i see him in you, and you, and you.
it's enough to claw the sight out of days
and take solace in a warm sclera
blood gush from somewhere besides
the empty middle whole of me.

i want to curl my fingers up in
that one's hair and pull his face close,
feel a stubblescratch on my cheek, nose,
the accidental bumps of teeth
the salt of his mouth making
my mouth water, making indiscriminate
soft noises of pleasure and forgotten
loneliness, if even just for a few moments
before the pullaway.

i want closer, i want the cling.
not this leftbehind back of the fridge
leftover monday morning feeling;
a perpetual alarm blare at the base
of the skull like dull tingling and
every little sidetrack distraction
a snooze button five minutes too short.

a quick wit nick of the finger
enough to pull red from the recesses,
and remind me how easy it is
to love every little thing so entirely,
and then smother it with neuroses
and all the wrong answers and
regret and hope and longing
and rejection and obsession.

i get addicted to whole red holes.
the deep color draw of you so
damn disarming, and i need you
to need me to fix something,
so i can feel like you need me
for everything.

to make the brown hair
and brown eyes more solid
and less sad, less of a cryover
on a 4am sleepless mourning.