Barbara Nichols
We stumble
We stumble drunk mumbling incoherent sentence’s,
We drag our heavy lives around,
Waiting to unpack them on to someone,
Will we do it unsteadily just to do it???
We watch the soft billows of smoke pour out our mouths
Our eyes reddening our minds expanding,
The house abandoned we enter,
To keep eyes away from our misadventures,
We touch lips to lips,
Hands in frantic fury of unclothing,
The ground so cold on your back, goosebumps,
Trace my finger tips across the canvas of you,
I want to remember every inch of your beauty,
Your hazel eyes stare deep into mine with such compassion,
Your hair smells of lavender rose oils,
We crush the pills and snort the day away together,
Fading in and out of reality,
Failing to notice that one day this house will be built,
And this, this will be but a fond memory,
We stumble,
A Guide to Losing It All
The first lesson I learned easily
and I’ll share it with you now.
The first lesson is to let the coral
bite up into your skin. Let it
embed its pink-salmon teeth into
your heels and your toes and
don’t pay any mind to the soft
smokey billows of blood that
seep slowly to…
There once was a man
who told me
“You’re pretty.”I wanted to tell him,
“You are, too,”
but, before I could,
he disappeared
behind crushed
velvet and a bottle of
seawater he used as after-
shave. At night
I like to draw
his tattoos
on my arms. I heard,
somewhere, that darkness
is needed. It is
what makes
the answers prickle
along the rim.But, I am afraid
I am covered
in duct tape and the haze
of mid-afternoon traffic.
