words by dominic riccitello

Jun 10, 2025

darkened temptation

i feel you in white noise
echoes of hallways
pictures atop doorways
to feel you in essence
moonlight and fine lines
i rip for your tide
lips against mine

we etch in sands
i feel beauty in this
to find truth in hurting
we find darkness in time
paths in hallways
shadows between lurking
details and mentions
words and conversations
i converse in question

to feel you sideways
arms to curl
notes in noise
chaos in rhyme
i feel you in this
to feel each other in bliss
swift touch
a gaze upon your eyes
pink moonlight

i’ve died a thousand times
to cry the deepest in night
to love in the midst of
danger in memory
hurt and longing
touch in toxicity
ten strikes of lightning

i found words in this
broken questions
long conversations
a twirled backpack

the strings become
i dare you to hold
my thoughts in your arms
between streets of hills
two worlds collide
twelve years
a twisted conversation

have you always had
this darkened temptation?

words by dominic riccitello
Jun 7, 2025

sentiment of blue

to waver in question
die in hallucination
we question ourselves
in steps across boardwalks
between spaces of broken underground

i lie into you
deep diving from rivers far from blue
in destiny i choose
simple words
water and silky texture

we understand in time
i extend my thoughts to you
twenty five plus nine
like reaching from beds
twisting atop sheets
few words
emotions
how they bleed for changing

we touch by fingers
little grasp of details
running edges across hands
like bending texture across reality
i fell into the reach
eyes gazing
words become glossy
lips of uneven feeling

to say words find time
i bend to remember why
in when and in yes
things coexist and we reminicse
sweet lighting on beaches
canals in cities of water

i find myself lost in textures
remembering how this feels
the way the wind met my skin
i exist in nostalgia
beyond grasp of reality
a photographic memory
the words, the colors
the softness
the way i remember lightning
it never strikes twice
until you move through the memories
the healing
the hurting
the undying need to love yourself
always

words by dominic riccitello
Jun 4, 2025

never quite unwound

i wake in the middle of a sentence
words coiled around my neck
each breath a question mark
looped and knotted

in mirrors, i see
reflections spiraling inward
a helix of almosts
cracks and dents, broken glass
and never agains

the floor tilts
beneath steps retraced
paths folding into themselves
like origami regrets

i speak in circles
language bending back
twisting beside
worlds intertwined
a lose in the curvature

hands reach out
fingers entwined
thin air
grasping at the edges
of a moment that slips

time doesn’t pass
it loops
a carousel of echoes
spinning without music

i am the knot
tied by unseen hands
pulled tighter
with each attempt to loosen

we deflect in hope
we lose ourselves in dire
i repeat until i insist
bad things end
good things ride
lyrics twist
like midnight around clocks
on the edge of southern
and to love without regret

words by dominic riccitello
Jun 1, 2025

supposition

i found you in theory
two interlocking
yet one breathing
a connection of mere meaning
we find truth in our desires
lighting fires in puddles of gasoline

i extend into symmetry
wading between versions of myself
depictions of who i want to be
grasping reality of who i am

we burn rubber in chaos
a darkened toxicity
dancing in a blanket of electricity
i find myself in water
bleeding and drowning in terms of chaos

we make motions from phases
interlocking reality like a scheduled movie
i transcend into heaven
voiding my truth
pulling books from shelves in a tampered mind

we echo in reruns
flickering frames on stained reels
i name the silence between us
do we call it divine

thoughts melt into thunder
language loses its shape
it becomes
a ritual of glances
a theology of almost

i sip from the static
to taste memory
fractured vices
yet familiar longing

even in unraveling
we are script and screen
ink and impulse
never fully written
yet always belonging

words by dominic riccitello
May 30, 2025

we don’t even fight anymore

we built our years in layers
quiet mornings
a shared glance over watered mugs
groceries half-remembered
and always the same way home

you grew into my silences
like ivy
like breath warming the corners
of the floor of our first home

i never marked the seasons
until they stopped arriving with you
twelve winters
each one softening
into the shape of something that stayed

love became less like thunder
and more like folding laundry
ordinary, precise
still full of touch

we broke without breaking
no storm
no slammed doors
just a widening
your smile reaching farther
from what i could carry

now i find you
in muscle memory
in how i reach for two plates
in the songs i still skip

it wasn’t that we stopped loving
but that we loved
ourselves more gently
and each other
from too far away

i want to say thank you
without unraveling

i want to hold the weight
of what we were
without asking it to stay

words by dominic riccitello
May 28, 2025

after the part of you

i feel the twists
vertebrae of your neck
twisting on fine lines
waves and nines

i hide in forests of evergreen
wondering to wander
how you feel seen in shades of shadows
you walk with force
touch with delicacy

i extend into forms of diversion
forgetting where the silence goes
how breath curls beneath your questions

in rooms we never finished painting
i still trace shapes in corners
ghosts of your gestures
hung like lanterns in my chest

time folds softly in your absence
a paper crane sinking
into the lake of my waiting

still, i tilt toward the sound
of your unsaid return
holding the hilt
i forever found lurking

we move in night
i speak into why i say
what never quite means enough
how names soften when echoed too long
how longing is a quiet language

i ask the dark to hold me
the way you never said you would
but did
in the space between touch and retreat

i speak because the silence remembers
and i listen
for the part of you
that never meant to leave

words by dominic riccitello
May 19, 2025

windowsill

i find darkness in virtue
broken down moments turned to rivers
you wake in choosing
life over damp closets

have you spun in rapids
pulling to find strength
riveting moments gone fleeting
i rescind the thought of
negativity in chambers worth living

you find stride in resilience
charity in the way you speak
a softness you hold like
jersey cotton sheets of our childhood

i find time in when
the bends of our clock
the tick you hear at night
i slip into
thunder and soft water
raining in time

you believe time is cut short
i believe time got the best of us
you grasp clocks in hallways
of your grandmother’s house
slipping into childhood
sunday mornings on the television

you moved like memory
quick to vanish, slow to settle
every room still holds your outline
a softness pressed into furniture
the warmth left behind by presence
without sound

34 years and i still remember
soft holds, lightened hands
time is how you treat it
video camera memories
birds chirping outside your bedroom window

jaded imagery

i remember time with a softness
it feels like sadness
yet it’s bittersweet

i still fold laundry like you did
still count heartbeats when silence lingers
there are pieces of you
in the way i leave the lights on
in the way i say certain things
in the way i breathe when i think

remember how i said
i’d always remember the way you were
i remember in details
in echoes
in time
outside our bedroom window
thinking how you thought
wondering how you’d remember us

sometimes i wonder if memory fades
or if it just changes shape
you live there now
in flickers
not like a photograph
but like light through curtains
on a quiet afternoon

and if time comes back
in moments
i’ll meet you there

words by dominic riccitello
May 17, 2025

photograph on the bookcase

i etch you on sidewalks
hot tar on pavement
we bend with desire
moments on benches
in parks i long to remember
grass among my feet
the way the wind paints you in memory

we decipher moments in longing
to find details in our desires
we etch and paint
we fill voids to create normalcy
dirt on pavement
crippling memories

i fade into thought
die to find time in evergreen
the grass is always free
across pavement
burning into ideas
wading into triumph

i still feel your name around 4am
moon yearning but not fearing
to call forth for or to stand adjacent
you live with one life
to fade into memory
or burn into what you call this

i can paint you with vibrations
braille on the tip of my fingers
we grasp in the in-between
atoms in the universe lead us here

time is what you make it
sadness is how you treat it
bittersweet is how it’s painted
you still love in the ether
time exists in all versions
from ’91 to ’25

we exist in the past
parallel versions in each others minds
i ask you to ask yourself
do you flip the dime
heads or tails?

heads is how you hold it
tails is how you treat it
both exist simultaneously

do photos still exist after the memory?

words by dominic riccitello
Apr 18, 2025

five minute thoughts of you

in fields of grass
between fallacies of you
i remember in time
like dimes spinning on cracks of steps
we come in and out of consciousness
i waver with anxiety between fields of nothingness

in fields of grass, i revel
singing songs with multiples of you
to spin with darts
on a board in a dim-lit bar i used to call home
we stand in question
to believe our silence in this position

in fields of grass under moonlight
i hunch in triumph of desire
to wonder is to wander
the vibrations of our brain
blood through my veins
i used to feel like this in 2006

in fields of grass under moonlight, i revel
do you understand the rhythm
two stuck in tango yet one with cracked calluses
does the grasp let go
do we fold or follow
i used to hear you at night
but just another refrigerator creaking

in time we find moments
longing feelings and emotions
dusk on sidewalks yearning
i’ve always thought of you in abstract
a painting i couldn’t quite finish
they say you make nice with honey
but i only make memories in hurting
i painted you in strength
yet the memories of yesterday still sting
you paint them to be
how you remember them in time
yet time splits and you forget

i used to hurt in shadows
in the great silence
a wednesday afternoon
finding and learning of time i found yearning
to be a better man
to understand why things seem to fold in repetition
hands intertwined
fingers locking

how do you let go with no fingers
i remember in time
i could die on this hill
find time and fill memories
every day i let the brush go
painting ideas of what this could be
one day you’ll find things
a man on a crack in the ocean i left for him

we pull rapids in chaos
i stand at force, i remember
always in dark
a sad song i wrote for you
like the one on the radio
the one you always used to listen to
yet never knew was written for you

words by dominic riccitello
Apr 10, 2025

dust on a library shelf

in depth i find meaning
in truth i find deepening
we melt into ice
hot tar with feet on pavement
dreaming

we talk of end
holographic bends
edges which run deeper
mirrors in vapor
flicker and teeter 

we find details in moments
darkened nostalgia
blurred components 

i remember in time
thorns on a vine
twisted in rhyme
you build chambers in hurting
throwing keys into voids
reverting 

i bend to break into two
i dance with limbs broken
like wind slipping through
spine on cracks
silent symbols in synesthetic stacks
hidden books on library shelves
dust like ghosts in a city of selves

we stand in pace
longing for time to retrace
we make worry out of nothing
to find time between breathing
you pause to make sense
when sense is just static in past tense

we are broken by our vices
ice cream on hot pavement
melting in slices
i used to die to melt
how i’d pick moments and wear what they felt

i stand in parallel
while you sit in a perpendicular spell
you were always one to watch
and always the first to let go

words by dominic riccitello