when i can’t sleep i think about the night crust
in your eyes
in the morning when you wake up
with your back to me and i don’t
take that as an answer.
i am a force i will roll you over
i will make you love me
in the shy breath of morning when sun
shines just so between my
blackout curtains.
when you hold me it feels like waves.
your chest breathing against my chest.
your fingers clasped like a locket
against my arm.
i know i’m a fool for the way i draw lines up and down your arm
with my fingertips i know i’m
desperate
for some small wastebasket fire
between both of our hearts after all
they’re existing so closely that they
just must spark.
when i can’t sleep i think that you must’ve seen
the night crust
in my eyes when you wake up and i ask
without asking to wrap my body like a satin ribbon
around yours.
you take whatever i give, passively.
i never thought i’d be such a philanthropist.
i’m googling the IRS hotline number because i
simply must know
if our relationship is tax deductible.
you’ve seen the night crust, you’ve
seen smeared makeup, you’ve
seen the stripes. it makes the small moments
that much bigger, that word history.
it makes the small moments look like love you
can stop doing but you cannot take back.
you lay there with your eyes closed and it
was like that i came first to notice the night crust.
uninterrupted in my view, unashamed to peek.
existing so closely i just might spark.
there is a strange magic in calculated breath. synchronized necessity.
i want to have
that thing with you where we dare not
speak
its
name but we revere it.
we respect it and we do not fail.
but we fail every single day and we get back up
we do
we do we
do.
because we have more in common than night crust.
we talk a lot without words. we use our eyes.
i would know your laugh if i heard it
on another dimensional plane so please do not
find anything funny
ever again.

alexis briscuso lives in brooklyn, ny. she has been featured in voicemail poems, queen mob’s teahouse, and is forthcoming in noble/gas quarterly. she tweets @nikonamerica and really only cares about english rock bands and ryan reynolds.