in the night swell

you are under my nails, sweetness like caramel, clinging to me. in my dreams tossing me over your shoulder, over your weight. can we live again? I see the changing of you, in you. I am not surprised. I am loving and quiet in my expressing of it. “paint” , she says. the quality of your voice, equals this sighing and cloud blowing. “paint”.

the trees are sick my love. they color themselves, broken in those veins. broken in the delivery. “but they fill up so fast”, just like these fingers and the disjointed part of me. sleepless and fluid. so I water my plants to the sound of your voice, forgetting the prisms you hung on the porch. we talk about it. feeling it, rising to meet it. sometimes it feels like I reach this point and then all time ceases to continue. a cycle of falling, as those angels lift me up. I’m becoming quiet in my subconscious yelling through tightly closed teeth. tether me. tie me down to your waist. sealed in, waterproof.

walking backwards, cleaning and completing the dance. all your dreams tied to the roof of my mouth. almost every night, visiting me. I can’t speak to it, not directly. not like your hair speaks in elegant wisps, tickling me, waking me. you are so infinitely beautiful. I am waiting for a truth, an eruption of truth. writing you into my day. sleepless and crumbled. stop by and kiss start this energy, one more night.

art credit: Tega Akpokona, ‘Reverie’, 2018 Nigeria