gods and goddesses stilled mid-flight,
immortalized in a glory fast fading.
distilled sunlight filtering through, unheeded,
as a devastating dawn for redemption awakens.

     dust scattering over marble hands, forever supple,
as angels fall from grace,
wings clipped and torn asunder.

the sigh of a thousand lost souls, searching;
the thunder of a thousand chariots, unbridled.

     a wing outstretched, a bow pulled taught;
drawn, not fired.

frozen heroes lifting voices unheard;
     the calm before a storm, a fight unforeseen,
silver linings beckoning victories
of heaven's epics left unsung.

look up into the clouds and you'll see a history unwritten,
for they speak to you in murals
of smeared colors and pure light.

but hush! sweet child,
off you drift into an insincere sleep,
until these stories buried beneath your lips,
     singed, searing, burning away memories of the battles that
   linger ,over your tongue  ,
are no more than a shadow of a flame.

   and as his lashes flutter closed over blue eyes
   and his heavy golden curls fall on white sheets
   she whispers,
        the renaissance was not painted for you.

i hail from heat, heat
in the heart and in the home, in the head and in the heel of the
sword that swings for both justice and action.
i inherit this love, this life and these virtues like heirlooms.
i inherit this boldness from you
i inherit the air of a highborn lady, while not without the humility of a low born daughter from you
i inherit gentle hands of craft into fists of rage and fire that melt away sorrows from you
i rise and fall, for from you
i breathe.
unspoken it was passed down, and yet it stirs and whispers to me in my bones of
ancient thought and force,
passed down from kin to kin, from one blood to another of
temperance and will
that flow like tradition—
a book written on age-old sandstone pressed eons below the earth,
text mapped in bloodlines over a body, not alone. never fading.
you bid me to rise from dust and ashes into the woman of your forging,
and so with a kiss between my brow for
farewell and fortune
i may live with your light tucked into my heart,
because my inheritance lives within me.

red stains, fading, cracked, scented

     if i kissed your prints, would they kiss me back?

sighs, thoughts, spaces between prints

     spaces between words, between parted lips and floating thoughts the world! is so crowded with space but yours is the one i want to fill .

     but where are the lines? lines of loss, lines of lawns, lines of ink and rips and more stains and letters, in the hands and on the pavement

where are the lines?

why won't you go there?

why do you hover in these foul, indomitable spaces? why do you seek that which you should not?

     if the shadow of lines slinks in your quiet expression, then why are you still here?

     if the echo of your soft face lingers in my hands, if the whisper of your breath and the heat of your skin still singes my own, then why do you disappear?

lovely wraith, lovely memory of a thing that once was, why do you sit so alone?

because i am coming to your space, and if you can see me, of shadow and fog, then i will meet you there,

     on a line of our own.

>because it's a death premeditated and i can see it unfolding,

     sharp wounding painful

and the discourse in the sky is telling me so, yet why do i keep walking west?

if you kiss a statue in the dark,does
it leave a mark?like the moonlight's

cold stain on pale columns of necks and
thinner bones of knuckles,or like the

heavy-handed cracks on thighs and
mine own,leaking gold to match.it's

easy to admit a mistake in the dark is
what you say,but marble lips leave

little space for contrition.there's irony

in that,in rennaisance-made lovers who
screamed for dominions and settled in

ash instead.history is adjusted,and the
cycle continues.but they left their jaws

open,and the light is pouring out.

girls and boys and girls! its
a sultry summer, swinging, sighing, swishing hips by mine
slipping elusive behind stone arches, cursing on my lips, **** (whispered, softly)
glazed cherries in a glass bowl they drip and melt, and oh hell
my fingers are red and sticky and sweet but i love it i love it and
she's smiling like a dream
she's saying goodbye until next summer
until another year, another dream will find her way to me.

there is a place i have to go, where i will always have to go.
and it is a place you cannot follow, because only i know how to find it.
it's a secret, but it's everywhere, and it lives in the groves and bowery inside me,
flourishing and green and quiet and steady.
its lungs are my lungs, so i must go to give it air,
but to also breathe a deep breath of life back in when i feel most stretched or worn thin,
and especially when life has been quite through with me.

but it grows cold and lonely at night,
and i have to visit it then, too,
when fell things awake and bright suns slumber in their shadows,
because im just as much a part of the day as the night.

if you will wait for me, where i've left you on the edge;
if you will trust me, believe in me, even when you don't fully believe it yourself;
if you promise you will leave me my hidden place,
then i will always, always, come back to you.

maybe it's there, in the crevice of his hard heart, that he heard the soft echo of light.

maybe, if the wound really is where the light enters you, it's in the heavy handed claps or in that gruff way men tell their sons, when it seems like the right thing to do, that they love them,

and then it's gone,

vanished into the cold nothingness, behind

rough hands and hearty laughter and the slow descending numbness of duty and honor and being a man.

it's faded, worn over, rusted old coppers,
until there comes along a boy who'll tuck the rough love away, who won't stand startled but rather perplexed,

who'll keep it boxed safe like pressed flowers between thin brown paper.

and then maybe, maybe that sweet boy will spread a few more, until his love is no longer a coarse and dying brittle sea air but nourishing, sustaining,

and maybe then he can start over.

you curl your fingers around the nape of the
passenger seat and the cold
metal stings but you can feel the
ghost of the prey brush your body
like the streetlights on the backseat last night
before you clutched the headrest and
you reach in the dark but
your hands miss the leather

the warm body heat of the car
thrumming up beneath you slams
your head into the dashboard where
the light turns from a bruised yellow to a crippled red
you are awake again
the steering wheel is cooler than you remember
smoother, sleeker, stealthy the wheel
will turn the predator around in a circle because
it seems to mimic itself where
in mimicry it is found
oh tyger tyger simmering out
you drive.
the gear shift does not obey when you
push it up rough and messy but it
locks in gear while you
wrap your fingers around the curve
and grind to a halt in the road
you cannot make this cliff.
the light in the dash blinks.
the trunk is opening and the vehicle is still moving
you roll down your window to ask the night a question in the glazed white of moonlight that is
so much like forgetting
will this road take me back to Del Sol and the Girl Who Lost Her Lover on Route 66?
she doesn't respond but
that is okay because the vehicle is still moving
and the leather is slick between your thighs
and you are going down
tonight you will descend.
the night will draw you home.
goodnight lover.

Valhalla, land of martyrs, where
brave men come to rest their banners.
Hear the glorious call, beckoning,
for a thousand more await you in the hall of gods.
May you step into the light
with your sword at your side--
the blood on your hands speaks of victories untold
by the lives of mortals,
stories that will be sung
by the blades yet to swing and
warriors soon to be bred.
Rise, do not weep;
ascend, brother,
for the gates hewn by time welcome you.
Come forth in armor no more,
and we shall embrace you as the king
you have proven to be.
Worthy in all manner,
purest of heart, strongest of will,
forged from those beastly fires of heaven;
enter, and your reign shall never perish
under the withering storm of eternity.
Enter, and be remembered for yours, the legacy unforgotten.

oh sweet moon-milk of mine
soft crescent (swift faded
honey-pink curling  now
lie down.
oh blushing beautiful lovely
boy-doll waning cheeks
feed up, love.
caressed smooth marble skin
slow down
luna lit cherubic boy of mine
perfect cupid arrow
shot.

a glass chalice shattered on marble steps,
a cherub speared by his own arrow—
    do not tell me you do not hear it.

where moon boys and glossy girls live boldly,
they glow, shining and tacky like transparent saran
wrap
a rope around your neck and
stay.
for where death is present, so too is its midwife.

inhale exhale
in the dark
help guide me to the exit sign

oh! perform for the lords and ladies,
lie down under lights and washes of blushing love,
over your body
lay a rose for crows who do not sing.

but beware, when slowly will a golden shroud descend

and you will fall to your knees.
(as petals fall to the ground, so soft)
and it will part a way
(if buttery light could cleave so)
not clear but swiftly fading, slowing

illuminated faintly dimly glowing
above me reaching inhale
exhale inhale exhale inha—

thank you.

.
oh fallen child, where have you gone?
is there really balm in Gilead
or is that the mistaken hope of every saint and sinner?

it is a silent night tonight, blessed with only one star,
and i hope that it is yours.
for the world went black when you closed your eyes
and will need new seeds of light.

how did we fail you so badly?
how did we fail to see underneath, fail to
hear you screaming, telling us you felt wrong.
you spoke out for us, lifted us in our silence,
and yet, we said nary a word during yours.

it is not hard to tell someone they are loved.
to let them know that they have done well, that they have worked hard;
to lighten someone’s heart with a simple word or two.

for in this life of stop and go, the rush and sigh of a few billion souls
runs fast like rapids beneath the feet, and
it is not so hard to be
lost ,
swept up amidst a current of
mockingly pulsating restless life,
all the while being buried ,
fathoms beneath a violent sea of wrath,
a tempest held in depthless waters, a fight unresolved—  
where, under the shadows of a brooding cloud and a weeping rain,
our sorrows will wash over us.

but what good is a battle unwitnessed?
address it say its name.
stop hiding it behind plastic flowers and brittle leaves,
under rice-paper skin and honey smiles.
rip the valance off
of this drapery of deceit
and lay bare before the world the truth.

it was suicide.

he took his life.

mental health is real.
perfection is not.

reach out.
speak up.
give love.

if anyone can be saved, then
let not your death be in vain.
.


rest in paradise, jonghyun.

>My lover and I make a crime scene every night. But every night, we walk away with more blood on our hands. Not victimless, but witnessless.

            tell me what this carnal discourse is. tell me i can wash it off. tell me i can forget.

     >But no, the world murmurs back to me, no, you get to bathe in it. And then, just when you feel anew, you will open your eyes to a lake of lost lovers.

the city is beautiful until it corrodes.
the city is beautiful until you are trapped.

send me home,whispers your heart beneath
a grey blanket,but the city is where love and

genius live,we can't leave,we can't go
send for home,it yells,and now it is tearing

you apart it is picking through the sinews of
your warmth it is shredding you out

you push it peels you stop,it peels,
the book of chaos sits next to you

should you open it now?where does wisdom lie?
is it in your palms,or beyond that,somewhere

hidden, unfolded?
you don't know because the city is still beautiful to you.

you don't know because you never open that book.
(but your heart peels on.)

gaslit streams of dreams
and now you're psychedelic
soaking in highs and higher you're
throwing me over the bridge
and under a bus but
     >is that a bucatti?
and im telling you
     >no, its just another dead thing
and that seems to catch your blown eyes for a moment
because you smile at me
as if I can't already see the phosphenes dancing behind your gaze but
not before you say
     >what if we could make it one?
and now i'm smiling too because
     >who's to stop us?
the night seemed impossible and
unfortunately, we were still awake.

a mercy misplaced
a raven's cries amiss
fallen and forgotten he stands over
petals dipped gently in blood
and a dagger slipping silently from cold hands.
it is a treacherous thing, his heart,
and it has betrayed his lips.

/There is no fellow in the firmament.
              but only fire can cast down raging blood,
running through the city, flagrant
         smoke on a collonade of scepters, raised
— line by line: note the conspirator in the masses
                 Doth not Brutus brotherless kneel?/
traitorous hands, leaking red
                 /Speak hands, for me!
— from a dagger plunged deep through the heart of eruption it
                                          spills chaotical, arterial, sinful
                                      down and down ribbons of life
        crown in rotation: halted
on tumbling tyrrant, passes guiltless largesse from hand sought to
hands yet seeking, searching
[whisperings]
         "but on what grounds is usurpation justified?"/
         "what cavity yet persists in the dawn of these reds rising?"
kneeling king, sodden with loss
          bend for me —
                       Et tu, Bruté?/
screamitbloodymurdersingitholydivination
                      ­                 Then fall, Caesar.

somewhere in summer, where red cherries sat in a bowl, glistening, and where her skinny lemon bicycle
and her daiquiri ice top sat discarded, aside
          —somewhere in her summer she grew up.
it was in between caressing winds and delicious sunlight,
sparkling through windows, drawing locusts on her face, his face.
     it was somewhere before summer had started, rising;
          it was somewhere after summer had ended, profound sadness.
               it was summer herself, joyous and hopeful and alive and buoyant,
it was in the middle of touches and kisses and sighs that she grew up.
italy, 1984.

she was obsessed with this idea of rebirth because she messed up too many times; she believed everyone deserved a Rennaisance, and it was her vision of the circle yeats drew,

and it was for dreamers who squatted in gutters along alleyways hoping to find a muse fallen and buried in the filth;

and it was for realists who really had fallen and buried themselves in filth because their homes were lower than that;

and it was for addicts, who believed they had really been to the moon and conspired against naysayers;

and it was for conspiracists who knew all along the moon simply didn't exist because they had it manufactured in their kitchen;

and it was for sleeping girls with trembling hands who sought out this kitchen in the night whilst everyone merrily slept;

and it was for the sleeping boy who really wasn't asleep but lying naked under sheets and limbs;

and it was for the tangled limbs that still quivered next to him from a dissolved ecstasy, boyish and sad and hungry;

and it was for that hidden starving hunger that still plagued the neighborhood's homes and lingered on doorsteps, begging;

and it was for begging peals of laughter that his mother sent up from the rooftop when the sky went dark and only her kin across town, reeling, beastly, gorgeous, could ever reply;

and it was for unsent replies, for conscripted soldiers, for wars fought by better men and surveyed by lesser;

and it was for less-than-scrupulous masters who hid under their solemn cathedral art that spoke higher than god himself;

and it was for god who left the world to fend under his illusory cloak of stars, so dim it only mocked his fiery wrath beneath;

and it was for that fiery wrath, the kind that incited and ravaged and devastated, merciless with abandon for all of mankind's own misgivings;

and it was those misgivings that had started her renaissance, her quest for glory cores and sovereign minds, for signs and streets and women and colors and light and the end of all suffering;

it was for restart (like a death, but shorter), somewhere between termination and a genesis in vitro (the liminal space found within and without); for her alone, solitary line cleaving the shadowy folds of time, defiant, windswept, miraculous, insignificant glitch through the eternal night; for her, until she commanded time to stop; for her, hungry; for her, powerful; for her, terrified; for her for her and only ever her: the regifted universe.

sometimes, it's the songs without words, the ones that slip silently beneath the undercurrent, that will seek you out,

that will sing you the terrible story of crows to mend your heart, that will whisper what no one will tell you because it's your soul manifest, it's your heart reaching out --

they open themselves slowly, but you have to be careful with them; you have to look

at them from afar, and bow, and maybe then, she will open her mouth to you, where not words but wisteria lie, where not passion but pain rest, where everything raw and immaterial pours out in the haze and panic of devolution in the chaos of the earth and skies and all that suffers in between where in the center of the swirling mass amidst the high cries of sorrow and love will be her

and just,

   her ,

some songs will move you, shift the light through you, shift the pedestal of surety and blow it right away.

some songs will obliterate you, but most will hold you.

and when they'll release you, you will fall, and it will be so glorious and so terrifying that you will become a god in the storm and you will know, truly know, then, what it is like to be immortal, to be unhurt and untouched, unmoored and unbridled, impossible against the possibilities of a mortal existence.

you will deify.

she's so pretty she looks like florence welch with her

orange hair all sweet and frazzled and her

verbena scented fair

skin skin freckled and smooth and sunny like

a ******* miracle wow you're so ******* bright and just.

**** i could kiss her face.

does she recede into her lair of solitude and silence, or does she slip away shadowless to the soft secret of her dark cove?

or, rather, does she sink into a sweeter place, a heavier place,
lifted high with the smell of  
  deep oleander and tall curtains of swaying stalks?
    for down and down she goes,
      the descension into madness made so easy.
        down and down and down until she is
          all that place and not at all that place.
      and so until her descension halts,
    down and down and down

she'll go.

silent girl in the red dress,              what else do you hide behind      that smile?                                                    "The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold.                                
The curves of your lips rewrite history." the hollows of your cheeks casting diffuse rose shadows, the soft glare—      lips that make the smile but don't quite touch the eyes,      eyes that see to you but you don't see them back,        —peering out of the frame, half turned to go
but just there enough to see (your eyes are so wide with joy); be this happy forever, it suits you. your knowing winter face is shy and alive, and you never say anymore but you are glowing— in this, ironically,            you are exceptionally dissonant; the permanence is
astounding—     startling, halogenic— you, the girl in the quiet red dress, captivate.                and no one will see you.

draw a bath. close your eyes.

soak in your bath. (and then sink, lower)

look up, and then higher than that.

read the discourse in the light. read the flutter, the frivolity, the fumes. read it all.

and sing. whisper. scream. rage. rage rage rage rage rage rage rage. sigh. fall back. lament.

pull the stopper. drain your bath. wait.

stand up. stand tall, and then taller than that.

turn and look. really look in the mirror.

but just look. observe. vigilant.

turn away, not ashamed, not proud.

wrap a towel.

step out.

rinse & repeat.

there's a rift in your heart (as there
are in the hardest of hearts)
and it festers like an unsolicited wound,
inflamed by the ire from which your deeply-seeded roots grew, from which you longed to escape but could never run from  ,
but leave it, now.
lay it low,
in a river of forgiveness dispel your grievances
and come up, come again, unbowed of burden,
lest it finds its way downstream to you once more.

and then she said
          i'm going to touch the stars
        and hold the firelight so strong
      so that even when the sun
    folds up sunken in decay
  i will hold its lost burning
amidst my sullen dismay.

si la dia pudiera dormir mientras
el cielo la cantaba su historia,
o si la noche quisiera despertar
con el oro reluciente en sus ojos―

el mundo se marchitaría por sus pecados.
si tuvieran un amor brillante que
no era cubierto por los rituales,
ni la luna viuda que ya espera―

todo se hubiera como infinito.
pero inseparable el uno del otro
en formas que podían destruir la causa

que sostena su belleza inmortal―
que no solo morirían en el mundo,
pero en tiempo, en espacio, y en la memoria.

im wrapping these lights around the balustrade? of my stairs and i thought they looked beautiful but now that
im stepping off my chair they
don't look that nice um
they look sloppy and tacky
like the ones off the side of a Mexican restaurant
i wonder how natalie portman decorates her christmas lights.
they must be nice.
i used tape
she probably gets someone else to stick it up anyways but
the tape is pretty when the light hits it and the
colors blend and stutter like it's trying to short circuit the tape but
the tape is swimming in it even though there
is only light in glass in light
i stick the tape on the wall.
there is something psychedelic about holding a handful of rainbow lights alone on a chair until they start spilling over and you tilt your neck to see where they go but
there is only the ground there is only the ground there is no where to fall into but
the light is moving again because
you are the tape
and you are standing on the chair where the glass blooms with filaments that you
touch and suddenly you are
swimming in colors that don't seem sloppy and tacky anymore.
you pull the plug.
the house is bright again.

like those moments in harmony
when i say "you drive" and
        you say "i drive"
and the universe
                 concurs that the
                              one of us
will tip our head back and
     the other one
of us will clench the wheel--
wherein both parties reap the
                    spoils of our little zero-sum game
because i get to leave the ground
                                 "don't stop"
kicking up gravel with the heels of the rubber and
you get to feel the earth
                                  "let me go"
leaving acrid smoke and burning metal
   and then, there, that somewhere in the middle i win and you win and the windows close us back up against the cold whiplash
             of sand and air
   and the sums cancel out like they
                                       always, always have.

and you will fall to your knees

(as petals fall to the ground, so soft)

and it will part a way

(if buttery light could cleave so)

and if ever gods thundered
quaked wrath shook perturbe d

so shall you weep

like rain and a sigh of mist that followed.

have you ever felt a masterwork in your heart?
          a repertoire of delicate sounds, of heartstrings and chords manifested?
tell me, far away, you can hear mine own, relentless thrum of the borrowed and forsaken, the lost and weary ,
hear its rising echo off alleyways and dim streetlights and broken windows and the backseat of your car, tell me
i am not deaf to a thousand sighs when
i can feel the sinews pulling towards the light, when
i know they tighten in repose and soften in memory.

i read somewhere that the world ends not with a bang but a whimper.

but eliot was wrong, because mine ended before it ever left my mouth.

someday i hope i can find a blank concrete wall on the side of an abandoned strip
  of road like yellow hyphenated tape
                      perforated straight down the middle: you, me, a picnic basket in our cherry red convertible with
    a can of graffiti staining the tips of my fingers black,
                 brazen instrument of destruction   spraying across the
obscenely grandiose texts that paint the insides of our minds, excerpts from howl, anything from tartt, lyrical, aesthetic, so above our heads like the smoke on your lips oh
                    the road trip is the one line track to solve all our miseries;
somewhere we can just stretch our arms out to touch the wind, in and over and all the way through,     somewhere we can  stretch our heads back to feel the sun drip down,  basking,      soaking, heating  and enveloping          glorious warmth,
          linearity mocking abstraction, with all the semicolons misplaced, all the words inverted, all the secrets unkept and blurted beneath the rustle of tall southern grasses and the smell of burning wood and light sage and the dark loveless sky, cold and everywhere
  but we will save up swaths of the unloving night, tuck them in the folds of your flannel and the creases of your skin
       all the while listening to something sad like matt healy on the turntable
   tinny and distorted running out of our car speakers, scrambling for purchase on the cheap leather seats up and over and through

someday i want to keep a bag full of midnight dances and music          
                    softly escaping on the sorrows in our hearts and the little whims we pray so much on
     with a toothbrush and a change of clothes, watching as the glassy light falls, a flag on the ground, a foot pressed into it, digging past our lives, digging into the new america, paradise for pageant runners and paisley princes
         in the garden, and i have not found so
              in paradise we are found, and here we stand, two broken things next to each other. horror story twins, you the white, i the dark, running the whole house down. we leave with abandon. we live with abandon. whole, and then suddenly, inextricably, returned.

strange how we can recognize someone
    by the shape of their shadows how
                        the places the light cannot reach tells more than
the places it strikes,                                  that the span of darkness across their throat tells more
about the way they move and the way they feel than the
                                  tear in the eye, suspended, caught on an eyelash, unfalling with the light;
       that the empty spaces of white that the shadow doesn't reach
tells me they are a reality                   and that the curve of their body is not impermanent,                                  or that the shadow is not permanent,                                           or that the light is fluctual, lining the liminal space between the two,
                                                               that the design of human nature is wrought not in one space but two,
           folding over and in, not in two colors,
but one: one within and one without.

how do we see age in a flower?
is it marked by the withering of her leaves, or is it in the soft sigh of her petals as they rustle lightly against the zephyr?
is it in the tender droop of her stem as she bows to an expanse of her sisters, forgoing her youth's firmness and resilience for a gentle acceptance of what may be?
as the dawn speeds up does she, too, speed up, until all that remains is a pile of potpourri in a glass bowl? or is her fragility yet remembered in the vestiges of her beauty, wisps of a girl who is no longer but could have never been forgotten?
where do we find the age in a flower?
for i do not believe she is timeless.

shifty birds, why do you sway so?
on the wind, in the surface of the lake,
            you are a disordered heart
   and yet, you hold?
flightless vessels, what bore you here, so many lives away from home?
if only it were so easy.
you say you will leave like that, leave by the sound of the water.
to the other side of lakes mirrored and glassy eyes showing even less.

leave by the sound of the water.
a charmed life, indeed.

sometimes i
throw your name into search engines
to find where you are
what are you surviving
do you wonder about me
i do
im so sorry for how i left you
i hope you are better

we're losing the moon and the oceans and skies are
burning but the craters beneath them
do not alter they
shrink away from the heat
they take a chunk out of the shoulder of the earth
instead
and the moon draws back aghast it is
going it is warming beyond the horizon and before the next dawn we are losing the moon to a
hole in the fabric of the space wall.

this must be love, you think,
as she presses your shoulder into the tile wall.

space is not a concept here
as she seeps into your skin
and you gasp
when she looks into your eyes
because she can feel you alive,
awake and writhing beneath her hands.
the tile is a dull ache.

later, much later, you will remember
that you locked the door, and that
the warmth spreading over your thighs
is dark and slow and blooming into
the blank sheets.

            the drain is filling up but the
            water is only another weight.
            you welcome it.

    your mouth is open.
    it is all you know.

she digs into your jaw
the flesh is all heart, but bones
do not lie, she reminds you.
but you sigh anyways because the story
always ends the same way: you,
the girl, and two severed wrists.

your spine curves against
a rock and a smooth place
while the sharp tang of sweat
hangs heavy in the air.
this must be love.
you will relish this.

    there is something forgotten,
        restless, shifting under a dreamless night.
    you want to open the window.
    your hands do not obey. you didn’t really
            want to open the window, then.

she whispers into your teeth that you are mine and
for a moment, everything is blindness, everything is
expanding as the heat races down your skin and
over your flesh and you are hers because you will always be hers and
you know this in the last chamber of your bleeding heart,
you have heard its chaos echoing, infinite, searing
beyond, beyond where there is no separation
of you and her and you, where
light begins and terminates because
you are the circle.

                                                                ­         later, there are lines of red,
                                                         three        parallel,            to match
          on your back like scars    of victory. you smile at this.

rivulets tracing down your neck it
                                                   is delicious,
             this sacrament you have been gifted.

the body is not a place to hide.

you mistake the fog in your eyes for
the steam on the glass, but no one
is there to correct you. then again,
it is only water, the same at your feet,
the same on your hands. you laugh.
water and fog and glass.

you lean over the toilet bowl while the blood drips out,
your ribs cracking open like soft eggshells,
but it’s okay because the cold linoleum will
cradle your head when it’s done. faithful lover. holy night.

your head slips into the bathroom sink.  
this ravaging soul of yours shreds.
this must be love, and this last time
the air sings it for you, the
candle snuffing out.

consummatum est.