crystalline mercies (you'll forget me)

she could be twelve, but for the time that stands between her
and the dates on the calendar, fresh static, precious and
the same,
a breath to hold inside the lining of her skin,
the inconsistency of thought inside her veins,
the clarity in mind, when crushes are the truth
and you can never run from it.

I may never stop writing about you.
lyric-made for definition, (straighter lines,
madeline,) a synthetic melody for every inch of you
that will play the game (so many years too early.)

a decadent decade in either direction,
never faded, but fading - colored ink
on softer hands, smaller wrists:
never a part of her, but someone else inside the fog:
not magnetic, just electrically choreographed
where her fingers traced the skin. circuit me,
circuit you
but the loneliness we were made for
won't leave the capillaries still.

("where'd you go for all those years?" he said;
"I cried," she said. "I cried.")