two men at the water.
you've all heard the puzzle, right?
you have three wolves and three sheep
and you need to cross a river.
(any river. let's call it—
oh, i don't know. the baptismal
jordan.)

okay, so it's a little different.
one sheep who doesn't follow the crowd
and one wolf in the skin of his dead brother.
it still works, doesn't it?
(especially if they're in love.
let's say they're in love,
just for the sake of it.
let's let them be in love.)

if the sheep leaves the wolf behind
it's only because he was chasing the sun.
let's not blame him for chasing
the sun. let's make a terrible joke
about another son, and a father,
and a fire/sacrifice.
(let's put the sheep on the altar
and see how we can bleed him
for the machinations of another.)

let's give the wolf some big sad eyes
and a failed career
and a bad relationship with his family.
let's give him a longing
for teeth and blood but let's make him
only long for his own.
(let's string him up and get him to dance
for us. let's point and look and laugh
at the stupid little apex predator
cowering at the world.)

where were we?
oh, right. baptism.
well, that's an easy one, isn't it?
call up the sun,
and burn it—
burn it? are you sure?
yes. he's sure. so we're sure,
aren't we?
(but isn't that a rebirth?
can you baptise a phoenix?)

(no. but isn't it world class
entertainment to watch the flames
turn to ash
right beside the water?)

sometimes, i look at dainty strong marble effigies
of the ****** mary holding her birth-bloodied son
and wonder if some loves aren't meant for everyone.

chastity-locked inside my heart, there's a woman
who wears long sundresses and lives in the little mac and cheese potluck moments;
she prays her rosary and feels the warm arms
of her traditional husband who loves her as a duty.

as for jesus, well, he's a cheap plastic figurine
she bought from ebay and stuck on the dashboard of her car;
the heat melted his feet in a crucifixion of 2020
but he still stands, wobbly and shaky and commercialised.
when she travels, she prays to him for safety.

(she doesn't travel a lot. she's happy to be stagnant and pray for still waters every morning.)

who cares about my heart, though?
who loves unconditionally and always,
and sees through the rips of cartilage and crushed aorta -
who will look and look and look
and see me? sorry, see me? sorry, see me out.

sometimes, i want to be a child again;
cradled in my mother's arms. sometimes,
i want to no longer put my dreams on hold.
sometimes, i want the world to look at me and say
"hey, pontius pilate, there's another one for martyrdom."

quite honestly, i don’t want you to remember this.
i don’t want you to finish reading and think man,
at least i’m not that pathetic,
you know? if i can make you feel better
about your own life, then great,
i’ll take it, but god, please don’t remember
me after you’re done.

i think that people exist when they’re thought about.
if it was that easy to blink out of existence,
i’d erase my name from every government database
and, i don’t know, go and live on an island
until i got eaten by sharks.

actually, let’s talk about that instead. sharks.
everyone’s scared of them since jaws
came out, but statistically they ****
one person every two years. that’s 0.5
people a year; half a person dying.
i’ve killed more people than that in stories.

but hollywood thought “hey, let’s make the big scary
shark into the villain”, and everyone said “okay”
and ate it up with big wild teeth
and now people don’t swim in shallow waters
because their shadows look like seals.

i wonder if someone made a movie about me.
‘the big scary sad life of never leaving your room’,
because people cross the street when i notice them
cross the street,
so it’s only a matter of time before i join
the barracks of some statistic, too.

you must like me a lot, love me even;
the way you tear into my body means you
want it to be yours. tell me you want it
to be yours and i’ll let you in. i know you
get off on tearing the door down but this time
i’ll open it right up. i’m here for you,
that’s what they say before they ignore
your calls. not you. i can call and you
pick up with your sleepy voice and viscous sarcasm
and i say everything to you.

(it’s pathetic.)

i hear your voice in my head, instead of me
and my voice. it’s always there, thickly whispering
all the things that i try and tell myself, to me:
a love letter from back home, the temporal lobe.
i wish i knew what you wanted from me
because every version of you that i create
tells me awful things, how it hates me,
how i should hate me, too.

(you should.)

so what part of this will survive? will it be me,
putting myself first again (selfish), or will it be you,
headstrong and fast and violent and so unlike me?
so unlike how i love and crave the atoms of you.
so unlike how i feel, how you tell me
i’m supposed to feel. what is it that i love? you.
what is it that i hate?
what is it that i hate?

i forget things half the time
and i forget that i’ve forgotten even more;
i think maybe part of my brain
decided, once, that i’m still young
and i have to make more room
for anything good. i’m dreaming
and that’s good, i don’t know why but,
well, there’s always a little split second
before i wake up where i’m not anything.
i’m not awake, or asleep, just lying
in the sweat of a thick winter duvet,
and i feel like half a person, half the time
but that moment before everything sets in
is a little pocket of happiness,
where i’m not me and those things were never done.

are we talking about trauma or are we talking about sleeping?
i can’t seem to do both, unless we’re talking about nightmares,
but we’re not talking about nightmares (and really, we’re
talking about nightmares). so sometimes, we cope.
sometimes, we lick the sweat off each others hands
and claim that everything disgusting is beautiful,
like blood and **** and ***** on the floor from too many pills
and a bathtub full of failed suicide attempts.
see, sometimes (sometimes meaning - obviously - always)
i have dreams about you overdosing
and i don’t know whether to call them nightmares or…
or or or or memories. you tell me you’re clean
and i know you took a shower for the first time this week.
you sent me a pinterest board with my name
but it was filled with photos of people who aren’t me.
i suppose that’s how you love, and i suppose
i’ll have to make do with what i’ve got, a double bed,
a lot of things that i should probably tell a therapist,
and an itch that needs no fingernails to scratch.

at nighttime, when the water
is more soft than warm,
and there’s (something) white
waves leaning up to kiss the rope
shoreline. at midnight (close enough),
when all the lovers have retired
to old-folks’ homes and single
beds. the stragglers, strangers (i)
who walk barefoot on the rocks
have cut their feet and gone home,
the stars seem to turn their back and i
(miss you) wait a little longer.

before dawn, before sunrise, the last
colours on earth are blues and blacks
airbrushed against a ***** palette
and they’re waiting for me to stop
waiting. the water is cool and feels
sort of how i imagine a hug would feel
so i linger in it, in the liminality,
until my ankles are in deep and it’s harder
to walk. but i walk.

i hope the stars are watching, now.
i hope they’re a little more comfortable
with suicide, since i am, having overcome
every happy thought i’ve ever had
and still this is what feels right,
being touched for the last time
right up to my neck and all those saltwater bruises.

i want to fill myself with it,
not just my lungs, but every cavity -
the space between my fingers, the gap
in my front teeth, right down
to the intimacy of my naked body
which will bloat before i am found.

but now, i am not found. now,
i am infinite and dying,
and in this one singular moment,
the nighttime sky reflects every colour
through the hazy film of the slick sea,
and my pockets hold no stones.