I don’t remember how I got from Southgate station to this corner market,
I was with you, smelling the leather of your coat
And scratching the tickle in the root of my scalp from where your chin sat
I reached my hand past the stubble and into the curls
The whole way home
I choose something sweet, cold
The refrigeration might bring me forward,
Instead my hand is now slipping in condensation,
I get into the car
Wet body and warm tongue,
Shaking and needing for food, forgetting what my own voice ever really sounded like
Just how you left me and how you will always find me again

Everything you are has become gelatinous,
Soluble in water
A spinal chord and neurons
Without a blood pump
Or an inner voice to tell you where to put it
Somewhere between a sea being,
And spit on a window
One is beautiful,
The other is human
You belong to much less

You are not you, you are not trees, you are not mine, you are not a leaf in the wind or a sunbeam through the curtains  
I do not trust this new model
You are dangerous, dangerous. Not like a rich and ***** night,
Like rats crammed in a basement
Like an overdose

This feels like the night before the end of something vast,
A plane ride straight into a hot, nostalgic summer
Or Christmas Eve
A drop in my stomach
Like I could eat the world
Savoring the last moments before I leave your heart
I could tell the truth
Or break all the drinking glasses in the cabinet
Forget to pay the bills
I won’t need money or clear skin where I’m going

Poisoned fruit in your ***** eyes,
But really I am just an apple
Organic,
Full of green veins and soft, brown spots
They are ugly and particularly sweet
Coming from a life of white bread and red meat,
You pucker at the acid
And sugar

Plague rat,
Faded nineties autograph
On an Italian restaurant wall
If ruining my day was an Olympic sport,
You’d be on the cover of Men’s Health
Smiling in coveralls

You have a hold on me,
The look in your eyes is loveless
You have a hold on me,
How I love it

I cannot ever resist the velvet sweetness
Until I’m wretching into something shallow and barely one degree from the carpet
It shows in the violent colors of an underworld rainbow come from my jaw,
How I underestimate you and you dehydrate me for days afterward
I’m a fly in a humid plastic bag
I’m an ant with a breadcrumb breaking my back
With the top of my head and my toes
I feel a dangerous house
But I smell something to bite into
Harsh, giggling
Like honey whiskey

He rides in loudly, and all at once
Like a hurricane healed to summer air
I have never been more grateful for the violence
I’m barely awake,
I haven’t yet popped my arms and legs back into place
But when coming from his mouth,
I am made of marble,
I was never truly bent nor asleep  

I will never have anything better to do
Than watch as you lock into your armor
Cradling, for the needy day,
That which you have given to only me