My claws are stuck into the door
-vicious creature with lust only for the ones that have left,
careless girl carelessly intoning her hymn,
word by word, undoing by undoing-

I hold an abyss in my chest,
I hold the exile I accept,
You hold my last asthmatic breath:
it breaks your lungs and blocks your throat.

In the end you beg,
in the end you receive.

Convince me of the purpose of breathing,
confide to me the reasons for letting go.

You lie on this bed with no sheets, only ghosts
you touch your lips in movement,
you deliver words of an author unashamed of his own limitations.
You seek to erase what has been:
out of context – unimportant,
inside this body -- crucial.
Without hesitation, you let your words slip
and your crimes spill
and you still haven't left this bed.

The third re-enactment is a joke;
the lines you rehearse haven’t been yours in so long.

I must seek forgiveness elsewhere,
or so this ceiling speaks,
as I spoke to it several nights ago,
clearly and immensely,
ready to choke on my own self-importance.
As I deny this memory,
my memory denies me the sweetness of yesterday
or of a decade ago.

In a different country, I look up at the same ceiling,
consistently,
unforgivingly.

Rest a thought at the edge of my bed;
I never minded the immeasurable,
nor the immensity of what a second can bring.
Whether the cracks in the walls can speak
(their mouths are too close to my ears,
their breath is too far into my subconscious,
too far into my unforgivable thoughts),
or the outside air can fill an emptiness not yet defined-
it won’t matter-
closeness and loneliness have never felt this similar.

Rest your being onto mine;
This is the last drop of vulnerability I dare give away.

I wash the sand off my skin,
Attempting a transformation-
From lover to myself,
From past to myth.
Catching your own mind in betrayal
Is to be forgiven-
You are only your own now,
You have only your own duality,
Your own unsolvable self.

Try to see-- the end is not what you imagined;
Try to understand-- immortality is never a blessing,
and the love you seek is not yet born.

Her blood is the blood of the stars,
Haven’t you heard?
They’ve played your dismissal in the choir of misfortune
And the roses you grew have found their perish
Long before the season of blossom.
Your name can’t be read in constellations anymore,
Nor can you see what you once were.

In a moment, the world turns
And the girl you knew escapes.
From the rings of Saturn she leaps,
And from her fingertips she lets go.