This is the beginning, 
        an apocalyptic beauty engulfs all roads
        but the silver lane of moonlight I trace
        down my own palm in the gathering dark.

My future grows from me,
        every path another limb of a rose bush,
        each fantasy at the end of every
        thorned hand.
                                    The roses start to blacken
        like fruit fallen to my feet, leaving me
with this single
line of thought.

This is a temptress of some kind,
          she pours her poisoned visions
          like seawater, rushing to the gutters 
          of hometown.
                                       Drags
                                                    images
                                                                     out,
          sweeps my shadow from the floorboards.

Her name is the same as mine.
           She lets herself into my head, 
           consumes me from inside-out,
           knows her way around my bones
           just by feeling.

          She is
          giving up
          every future
          I’ve surrendered to.

She takes me by the hand,
          window-shopping new lives at the pier,
          and in every inhabited house I pass
          I see each version of my heart
          hanging from the garden bushes.

I can’t leave her alone,
          her sun is so lovely curling down the cliffs 
          of my bruising spine, the sand, a collective
          conscious, holds me better than every
          perfume-hazing lover.

And tomorrow I’ll be in Paris
but tonight I’m not thinking of you.

I’m sleeping on the beach at noon.

          I’m growing a new face to wear,
          new thorns to wrap myself in,
          a new city to dig into.