drowning in tiny oceans.
schiele-esque nudes
     in german poetry books.
speaking in tongues.
visiting graves
     in two different territories.
ginger cats with moonstone eyes.
****** noses
     in street lamp-yellowed alleys.

inch-deep paper cuts,
sodden matches, dead roses,
mouldy coffee cups

warm handprints
     lingering like desperate spectres
watery honey eyes
     blinking away restless sleep
phantom pains from kisses
     months ago you can't remember
dust motes on decaying skin
     parting breaths and livid smiles
you've never felt so alive
     as when he died

Notches in her spine,
     bruised hard and in between.
Her sharp red hair,
     torn from the root and in clumps around your feet.
Blood pooling in your mouth,
     the drops look different on your sheets than they do on her skin.
Fluttering doves on the windowsill,
     afternoon sunlight and pressed flowers in books you know belonged to him.
Charcoal smudges darker than shadow,
     along the crease in your thigh and her shattered scapula.
Papercuts line the soles of her feet,
     and his teeth swallow you whole.

Ivory skin,
     alabaster nerves.
Daisy chain veins,
     lily petal fingertips.
Eggshell skull,
     cellophane lungs.
Brittle ladder ribcage,
     punctured balloon heart.
Spineless ***** child,
     with his birds' bones and naivety.

He will be every callus on your painter's fingers.
He will be every warm winter
     and every cold summer.
He will be every drop of rain.
He will be every scratch on the roof of your mouth
     and every last scar.
He will be every shard of light.
He will be every book unread,
     and every cup of tea gone cold.
He will be every speck of dust.
He will be every tempting kitchen knife,
     and every broken promise.
He will be every single thought.
He will be every one of your bleeding gums,
     and each of your blackened lungs.
He will be every torn out page.
He will be every picture on a postcard,
     and every blood-stained bed.
He will be every shot of morphine.
He will be every pigeon feather,
     and every torn-apart crow.

Skin as pale as lilies,
     now livid with interrupted bloom.
Bruises as dark as that Irish lake,
     five of them, of a brutish nightshade hue.
Body as limp as the towel they used to rub you warm to no avail,
     dotted over with dirt, your shirt torn through.
Eyes as vacant as the echo in a tomb,
     once blue before, now glazed over with vitreous dew.
Oh Clerval, how I have forsaken you.