screeching out this moment of delirious joy, letting the water swallow us.

Maybe this excuse is just enough to spin us into a pickup game where we’ll laugh because we can, until the sun disintegrates and nighttime threatens to set us free just to capture us again, back into the things we can’t escape.

She pulls me close to her chest and wraps me so tight I can cocoon in the squeeze.

pulling back just to stare into me like the stars found their way beneath my eyelids, and I think this might be my universe-halting love, the one that undoes me and keeps me whole all at once.

She is the bottom of the ocean, where all the magic hides beneath too many layers of dark and water and salt.

EVERY MOMENT PASSES like water through a clogged drain, barely getting through.

I steady my pitch so my voice won’t crack like it’s threatening to: reveal all the wounds that make me up, all the fear I’m harboring in my gums.

“Don’t help me to fight a life I’m stuck in.”

Number one rule about entering somewhere you not supposed to enter is don’t never question none of it. Don’t ask nothing and don’t act like you don’t know what you doing because that’ll land you right where you don’t wanna be.