He saw you vulnerable,
Bleeding from the inside,
He saw your purple stomach and
Pressed his knuckles to it.
He is a narcissist.
He took advantage of you
In every human way.
He set no bar.
He is not the way to love.

Take down the altar.
Cease your worship of demons.

In a world of clasped hands
Please be the pair
That opens to me.

He's vapor in your arms,
The dying shadow on the pavement
As the sun clips against a glass lens,
Distortion in the highest degree.

He may melt you,
Girl,
He may stain your lily skin,
Pierce your heart with a Sicilian warmth;
Take a hammer to the ice in your veins,
But he isn't bigger than life.
He's so small,
A whisper of stubble against the chin,
All wire and bone,
Effigy to the home you've always ignored.

Pull the trigger,
You whoreish ****,
Set your knees in the Earth and begin anew.
Hear the birds sing,
Their wings beating earthquakes in your stomach.
Fear nothing when he raises a blade
To your throat.
Remember his tears
When you told him of the one
You raised to your own.

A child stolen
Beneath her mother's
Scornful eye,
A dying bride
Slicing her skin
On her wedding night.
I see with no eyes
And I taste with no tongue
The rapture of the absence of your love.

I awaken from nightmares  un-remembered,
I cross seven seas to find you wilting.
I offer you my breast
On which to lay your head
And when you do, I feel it:
The rapture of the absence of your love.

She curses your mother daily,
Your wife only an obstacle in her wake.
She bides her time,
Wastes her life,
A moment gone in a flutter
And an opportunity taken too late.
Divorce? But what of the children,
A million fireflies scorching the night.
A puff of smoke,
A clip of the wings,
Her dead seconds will never take flight.
Who is the bearer of bad news,
Who will alarm the saints?
Who now will fit her ashes in their gloves
In the rapture of the absence of your love?

In what lifetime was this fair?
A tragedy born on the edges of procrastination,
A love story taken up in the middle,
Strangers only reminders
Of you in past lives.
Hesitation,
The knife slick with blood,
The truth hidden in the liner notes,
Stuck pinned like a moth
In the rapture of your absent love.

There's no more story to tell,
What burned for six months
Was dead in six seconds.
A white shroud was laid over the memories,
A bouquet of lillies laid in their hands.
Graves dug sixteen feet deep,
Traditional overkill.
What then do we make of the rubble,
The dirt left from the hole?
The woman who was shoved, shoved, shoved
Into the recesses of your mind,
Into the rapture of the absence of your love?