I promised myself that was the last poem about you.
But,
I've always been one of those people who
plays the same song on repeat
until it syncs with my heartbeat
and rattles my bones to dust.
or who
re-reads the same books until
the lines become my holy scripture,
the plot become my genesis and
my body becomes a canvas for a script I know by heart.
My head is filled with drafts for poems I've never written,
and hands I've never held.
I should blame it on courage but I blame it on you instead.
Maybe I'm just one of those people who
gives everything to one boy, forever.
Maybe he's just my routine,
like in the military.
Bright and early awake then straight to the battle field.
My body is adorned with marbled bruises
and crimson gunshot wounds
and when I rest for the night,
I'm shackled to a mattress of stone,
stained in the thick wine that pulses through my veins,
until the next morning,
when I must do it again.
The sunrise is my enemy.
She tugs at my eyelids
with raw fingernails each new day,
and I still fall asleep with
you as the only thing on my mind.
They say that you can't quit the army.
The cowards way out of a few wounds.
"Stay and it'll be a lifetime of glory".
And that's what he promises me.
the pages of your book are so re-read that they are battered and worn.