can you remember when their names came together in trains?

when you imagined him touching her headlight eyes

the furrows in his brow illuminated

when she made his jaw drop low, and his throat rumble

when their stares held rattling subway cars at ungodly hours, aglow

i feel like such a doormat
step on me please step on me
with your shoes
with your soles please sully me dirty me
i will not speak i am just a piece of carpet
here to suck up blackness and
the bacteria filled water from your boots

calorie (one word)

calorie count
she looks at her phone researching
the number in the little leaf of lettuce
she nibbled on before breakfast like a rabbit
she crinkles her nose
at the number pretends to shy the screen away from me

this cry for help, her bushy tail cries for help
her ears turned to see if i will cry, if i will nudge the carrot
into her mouth, forcefully

my deck is covered in white snow
untouched

this darkness you fall into is a disease
it sucks at you with smog black fangs
patterns you with bruises in its own design

your gaze pushed into nothing
your fingers, your arms, coarse splinters

it kicks you hard, leaves you winded on your knees
coughing up blood shoving me roughly so that i'm

lying on the concrete
with a cut lip---

sometimes i forget.

Sometimes I forget
that this darkness you fall into is a disease
that it sucks at your livelihood with its smog black fangs
patterns you with purple bruises in its own design

I glower at you for its nimble strings
as it puppets your gaze into nothing
your fingers, your arms, all wooden, coarse splinters

and when it kicks you hard
you fall into me, left winded on your knees
and i, crumpled on the concrete
raise my hand to a cut lip

something is not working
something is caught in the spinning wheels
(maybe it is something pink and sticky like bubblegum
or maybe it is a shiny night bullet
from a gun, timeworn fingers, the future triggers)
see how i splutter
see how you leak gas
something is not working

like a funhouse hall of mirrors
you give me no way to turn
no matter which pane I choose
I am confronted by my watery face

Mis(s)construed

I thought purity was like a varnish
that a romp in the mud
would tarnish me forever
mark me as slightly imperfect goods
like six pack socks sold at Phat Albert's
Warehouse, for five bucks each