The Nobody Somebody or: Unbreathed

The Nobody Somebody
couldn’t cup water in his hands
without it tiptoeing down his knuckles.
He did not understand this.

I met The Nobody Somebody on a train ride
going going going to the red red world.
He wore strawberry lace on his head. 
It fell before his eyes"
antifreeze green. In one hand,
a tin can. (In case his mother called.)
The other held the ring
of someone else’s lipstick
on the filter
of a cigarette
he wasn’t smoking.

I wanted to drink him,
to swim in the boy’s bleak
somethingness.
If he spoke, he would quote
poets I’d never heard of.
He would dress himself
in an accent unlike mine. 

I longed for him to give me a name.
Make a spaniel of me,
to be anybody as somebody as him .
I beg you, take up residence in my chest cavity.
Engage your teeth into my aorta and consume.
Crack my ribs as I feed you stronger.

The stoplights on his face scream go
when they thrust up to meet mine.
Absinthe eyes. Tea leaves.

Below, the hillside of his nose,
growing flowers of imperfection,
slopes downward into the tectonic plates
of his lips. Silent earthquakes
when they part. Fault lines
in his smile. Canyons in his hands.
His teacup teeth,
his cross bow lips,
 he draws his weapon
and inhales me out of myself.
I am a living ghost,
the curling smoke -- unbreathed.