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.

I see you, now.
Anxious, thick-skinned man; and his
     jumped-up, bird-***** boy.
Wet feet sloshing on lazy floorboards,
     footprints of a ghost.
Devoted eyes, devoted hands,
     flecked with aureolin and azure.
Wild eyes, shaky hands,
     speckled with blood and dirt.
Why have you dragged him here to see me,
     yet again?

I'd like to see your eyes,
     maybe one more time.
I'd like to see the blue,
     glisten like glassy globes
two feet underwater.

À moi. L'histoire d'une de mes amours.*
He was light.
He was radiant,
     and he was rapt.
He was brilliant,
     and he was blithe.
He was sent,
     and he was sound.
He was bliss, he was my rapture;
     he was my God and my nirvana.

But he was grief.
He was woe,
     and he was worry.
He was mistake,
     and he was malaise.
He was anguish,
     and he was agony.
He was in my very flesh;
     the yellow pulsing tumour of wretched, blinded love.

We wander together,
     your hair a burnished gold beneath the streetlamps.
We hold hands,
     your eyes wild and bright in bursts of taxicab headlights.
You pull on my collar,
     your lips stained and blurred from the wine.
We cling to one another,
     the stone steps slip under our feet, I catch you.
We run together, scream together,
     our raucous laughter bouncing off the walls and the sky.
We tumble together,
     you a mess of hair and cold fingers, the water is in my shoes.
We gasp together,
     the fountain has filled our lungs and you kiss me hard. The lights below the surface are flickering and I see black spots where your eyes used to be.
We crawl across the square together,
    giggling, you pull out a cigarette that hangs crooked and dripping between your drunken lips, your devil's smile.
We watch the stars together,
     laying on our wet backs while the earth turns and my stomach churns and my sick heart yearns.
The stars will stop for us.

The clang of armour rings through the clamour
      of our men screaming thy name.
Thy name that I bear, blazing bright
      as these brazen greaves.
A-CHIL-LES.

It is not I that they know.
It is not my feet that are thus as swift as thine;
    though they would believe it.
It is not my rough hands that are never wrong;
    but that have rather slain Sarpedon, now.

It is not thy knees that quake at Hector's call; 'tis mine own.
    A-CHIL-LES.
It is not thy eyes that water in fear,
    it is not thy hands that grasp thy spear, 'tis mine own.
Never wrong. Never wrong. Never wrong.

It is not thy gold-spun curls that spill forth,
    as thy helmet falls.
It is not thy blood that stains Hector's spear;
    it is not thy chest that splinters, 'tis mine own.

The clang of spear piercing armour rings through the clamour
      of our men screaming my name.
My name that I bear, blazing bright
      as thy brazen greaves.
PA-TRO-CLUS.