i have this fantasy where:

1.
i leave you, because i can; because you would, if you could. a short story: i have become extraordinarily good at predicting your movements but only during the night when you think i am not awake. it is tuesday, 3.46am, and here is 3.49: you make coffee, you pour it down the sink and graduate to whiskey before you'd even begun, you lay your head down upon the kitchen table, and you cry, oh you cry until you're wasted on every front. it is 3.47 and you are kicking off the bedsheets.

2.
i have *** with another man, right in front of you—it doesn't matter who. he is sober, clean, and loving; he holds me afterwards. you clench your fists and drink yourself a path to apathy. chances are you want to **** him, too. but you don't. i do.

3.
he got my hair, and my bone structure, and you never asked a single question.

4.
i gather all your alcohol and your cigars, and, with every one of us still in it, i burn down the house. in my last moments, i am cleaning ash from the floors, hopeless, helpless, a lamb to the stove and an old queen to the guillotine: i am hoping you will go before me.

you were sitting in my garden
legs folded under you, hands stained
with orange juice and apple flesh
fingers slippery on your ***** zipper
and on the earth i was a smear
of pure red, i ran to the horizon
and further still: deep and raw
and endless -
all the bad with all the good
how much of me do you want?

beneath your thighs the grass was wet
your skin was all sprinkled with green
and i could breathe the dew in you
taste the want of a hundred worms
smothering all of yours
your hands were between sticky and soft
and i watched my knees turn purple
until the sun came -
all the dark with all the light
how much of me are you taking?

clearly now i saw you, nature had no mercy
roots grew around your ankles
i cut you free and watched you run
i wore gold for you, wrote psalms for you
like ripened fruit i bruised for you
bled a road going home for you
and i could smell the peaches
oh i felt you now -
all the fear with all the hate
and how much of me will there be left?

there are weeds in the front garden
bundles of flowers turning brown on your bed
the imprint of your back filled out within the month
but the dust between your vertebrae never quite clears
& i've been sick twice trying to empty your fridge
we've got it all wrong again

you spit blood up into the river water
til your mouth is as clear and clean
as ****** tears: til your lips are
all embittered, sticky-soft;
tongue rolling over the back
of your teeth, you find the cold
has numbed you all through
from toes to hips to fingertips

hands rubbed rough with dirt,
she grasps in the dark for you
"so that’s that, then," she says
a voice like the scorned Lilith,
the weary Eve; she has been hurt
for the last time, the last ever
(you, on the other hand,
have only begun to ache)

among the grass your knuckles,
fresh and smarting, meet her palm
she spares one long lost look towards you
—and in her eyes will be your end
not unlike was his—
before she lays his clothes adrift,
spread out across the seafoam
funeral boats bound home

"that’s that," you echo,
and together now
you watch the water turn pink
pink like a bed of roses

i
you are dreaming: dreaming about your brother in spirit, brother in arms, you two sides of the one coin, him without his name but in every other way all the same. oh my brother, hiding in a hotel room with no windows, speaking in tongues, speaking in nadsat—dreaming of bowing your head to him, bearing your neck. if it is dissatisfying to you, cut it off.

ii
here it is perfectly silent. your mouth moves without a single sound and the fish clean away every trace of your blood: their gills tremble, inwards, outwards, endless; their scales shine like the moon upon the surface. you are born today into a monstrous world, a better world, and Lilith's womb ends at the shoreline—seaweed entangles itself round your ankles, the last despairing traces of an umbilical cord, sixteen years late. if it is dissatisfying to you, cut it off.

iii
serpent, sink your teeth into the apple of Adam; his throat wields to your fangs like the tired breath of a lingering lovers mouth. his hands are rough but your skin is rougher. today, Eve laid down asleep under your bones, your heart beats its last. everyone you have loathed is forgiven. everyone you have loved is not. but forget theology for a moment. you are dreaming. you are dreaming, and the rush of a thousand years of rain around you is your wakeup call—in your navel collects an ocean, in your eyes is painted a storm. civilisation on fast-forward sets up between your bones. sorrow makes a home of your heart. ashes to ashes, water to blood: if it is dissatisfying to you, stand and let it die.

one: playing dentist on a friday afternoon in your bedroom, watching the sun splay stripes on the carpet through your venetians—i filled every gap in your teeth with wads of faded pink bubblegum that i chewed for hours on end (and kept rolled up in the wrapper in my right pocket for the next time i wanted on impulse to bite out a chunk of your skin), and i told you that every time i kissed you now i could taste sugar, just like it was meant to be.

two: i watched my saliva settle glistening on your lips and it called to mind de-saturated pictures, polaroid-quality, of a deer's heart exposed, trembling, glossy and soft: eyes shining with pure lack of life. i fought to keep down *****, just a little—a hushed war on the edge of reason.

[two point five: when i touch you i try so hard to find the pink and not the red.]

three: i got into bed with you. i lost.

49°f on the sunrise, wind in your sails
the coast all calm, my mouth all red
"you want this?" you say, and i kiss you
quick and sunken, teeth like graves
with every inscription an old treaty
international law between the lines
of our coexistence; it is: definition
and redefinition of forces
peaceful conflict, maybe
content desolation

i say to you shining, i say "of course"
i am: the golden boy with a fog on his heart
you are: slimy, so sweet, a snail full of kisses
dismantling the borders of my skin like
a needle, a bug, pure irrationality;
but the sea-breeze sobers
and i know i will be fine
in the stability of your hands
and the love story of your fists

and when i breathe into the sand
i can feel my bruises swell
my scars flutter
the sky burns grey and my thighs
ever pinker; my lips ever more split
and now you hold me like the tide
and i come home with you smiling
52°f on the morn, salt on my face
and i know, i know i will be fine