Pastel colors
hues of blue and pink born from morning light
are too frail, too delicate
for his bedroom walls

We lay in embrace
and kiss like slugs
clumsily, without direction
pulling at each others’ lips

We breathe into each others mouths
and speak silent words like dead fish
putrid, slippery lines
from gaping mouths and bulging eyes
I know that this is nothing, yet

Months later
I tilt my head backwards
and look out the window
above his bed
Orange trees burn flagrant
against a sky
that looks like the sea
In this light
his irises are scales
of a twinkling, majestic fish
and my eyes squint and burn
like the brightness of autumn leaves

I, in the sky
He, in the sea
This room dazzles us with color

I feel like I'm a part of something I can't escape. Everything around me is moving too fast and I'm moving too slow. I'm caught in a whirwind of black, white, and gray, trying to juggle too much at once and spreading myself too thin. I'm too in love. I'm too needy. I'm too tired. I'm too sick of academia. All I want it something real. Something that is simple and that I can explain. But life just isn't that way. I've spent so much time searching for challenges, and seeking out quasi-answers to unanswerable questions. I like to see the world from different perspectives...to push my mind, my body, and my soul to their limits just to find a dimension that doesn't exist, or a state of mind that has yet to be confounded. It has all exhausted me...worn me down into a straw man, feeble and frail to the touch. I feel like is if the wrong fingertips carressed me I would simply crumble and shriek and cry. Just floundering like the flounder I am.