Life's entirety - bled out across bed sheets
A soul as dense as my morning coffee, still in its infancy
She buried him beside the shed, beneath the Mulberry tree
Storks brought no bundles to any doorstep that Summer
For Winter murdered everything they had, and the next Autumn was very foreign

They named him Angelo, before or after - I am unsure
Mother Mary was there, ghostly floating above his head
The coffin didn't fit right, left it open
She couldn't take another foot to holy grounds thereafter
Not since God took away her son

She wrote it in a letter - before she bit the bullet
*"No Church, No Gods, No Masterpieces
This is sacrilegious"

I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats in the gravy of 2 gone quite mad
without a chance,
hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,
I lean upon this,
I lean on all of this
and I know:
her dress upon my arm:
but
they will not
give her back to me.

i raised her
with a violent birth
my vocal cords tangled
like a drunk couple
making love
with her name.

she emerged from
the slit in men's throats,
a grown woman,
her sister followed,
from suffocated coughs,
glowing like streetlamps
from mouth to mouth,
never happy,
never settled.

girls like her,
they don't enter this
world easy,
they leave it in a mess,
exit it like a highway,
move on to the
next place.

there's a stain they
always leave,
yellow on the teeth,
marks on bed-sheets,
empty rings on
bedsides with last
nights drink
gone cold just like
their feelings.

just a girl they say,
harmless,
girls have endless love
in their hearts,
and endless hate.

your skin is the novel I never found the time to write
the kind to reside beside my bed
but every chapter is a break up letter to myself
and I keep passing them off as bed time stories - hiding them beneath your pillow in crumpled ***** of love notes
and god's word
you say you're not a prophet
but I swear you're the reason people still find comfort in the afterlife
and I stopped going to church after daddy left

I painted pictures of your chest
in every alter that would let me
but you're "not quite sure" how you feel about heresy
now you're sounding much like the pastor did on christmas,
with his drone of sinful scrutiny
and a pocket full of choir boys
you are the book in every top draw of every hotel ever slept in,
you are the force that brings babylon to its knees,
the hands that drowned the sea

They will write entire novels based solely on your eyes, create depths of intangible intimacy that can only result in displacement.

You will come to know of death before death.

They will dip their fingers in your blood and paint diagrams of love across your chest. You will transform into artwork, a selfish inspiration.

On nights that end in benevolence, they will be too frightened to speak; and you will never understand.

You will learn how to break, but more like waves and less like porcelain.

They can feel agony far beyond your compression. Your silence will be substance for extinction, *and a poet never forgets.

I want to see god. I want to know what god feels like.