Whoever said tender is the night had never had
their heart ruptured. On one knee
one moment for you, on both the next,
like Dickman. Pray if I must, but you refused to sit
in the pews with me—Pews full of peace and agony,
of lace and thorns—thorns my fingertips never bled for
because you never gave them. I filled you
with my nectar, you gave back your milk—"and I can’t help but feel
I am only meant to show you
how to love so you could love someone else,
better,” I said to you through fingers
like earthquakes. Eyes kaleidoscopes of Want—Need
that you’d shut up and say don’t go…stay…don’t
grow old without me in your faded, navy and gray
plaid pajama pants, the ones with little lint pills all
over them from washing them twice a week—
“I will pray for you” even though you never drove me
around because you said your car was a mess. Eight months
and you never cleaned it, not once. I wanted you
until I didn’t until I do. I will pray for you—like when I made
eye contact with a drunk man walking his rottweiler
or realized that I was the punchline. Salt on the rim, the sugar on the knife,
the one I bought in that convenience store we inconveniently stopped by.
Losing you was my doing—my undoing. “Sister moon,” he said,
I always thought she was a boy, a boy like the one I won’t get
to entangle my touch-starved limbs around when I lay my eyes
down to dream of the planets growing along the horizon
or violently shifting our orbit—we tasted worlds between our lips, didn’t we—
I will pray for you, what you look like
when you’re asleep, what expressions would give away what you are
dreaming about, limbs twitching, eyes darting
back and forth like a tennis match
I was invited to but chose not to attend. Prettiest Girl
in the Psych Ward, I take a pill “to help you sleep” but it only gives
me nightmares—where you’re still here, dancing with me under
the pale stars like the glitter across my collarbone
with cheeks the color of my bra. To bite into you,
even though you taste like a lemon. To hollow you out, until your rind is
all that’s left, my Hell.
I will pray for you and Holly Beine
and “one day” and birthdays when I don’t have to
not bake you a chocolate cake
twice because I burnt it the first time.
I will pray for you. I will pray for you.