you won’t find me here. wrapped
in the wool of violent, *****-soaked

*******. we’ve made a mess on the
tables, with mulled red wine, beside

cockroaches. every inch of skin
pink and trembling beneath other skin.

you can expect this: one perfect little
throat sliced clean. cleaner than your

moans. for every finger pried inside
me, there are a hundred more

pushing up into you, until your moans
soften into screams.

the squelch of your **** as it pulls
apart, the pulp of your parts so

pleasant. we bathe in you. love, our
sequined slaughterhouse: we wanted it.

you can find me here: drawn up
tight in my taxidermy, among

ten dozen dead doves. their wire
bones crunch beneath your sneaker

when you approach the front of
that forest. the black iris of my sold

soul, now an eternity for us both;
you approach draped in morning

breath, content to bite the bugs
from my lips. we always kiss with

teeth, because we are always high.
here, where i live, you are shivering.

we are god’s golden children,
untouchable with fuzzy, white mouths

that click in hollowed-out howls,
imitating wolves, waiting for who falls

fast in love first. suspended there,
we sigh against the flies, how they

**** our skin with grease-slicked
tongues. our guts blackened by the

gun, shoved all the way inside, are
now dusted with sickness.

there is a smile against a smile. my
skin stretching as your skin. love

wrapped severe, twine around a finger,
where the blood swells and gathers.

there should be trumpets for our
sallow suicides. a banner in an office,

frosted chocolate cake. instead there
is a kindness: rain carves a ravine

out of the earth. we tumble down like
leaves into the cockroaches and left-

over wine. two black mouths in another
black mouth. nothing grows over where

we rot, but it doesn’t matter. they won’t
find us here. not a single foot will

fall into our worm-warped skulls. this
is, for you, some small comfort. but again,

it doesn’t matter. years will pass, and there
will never be enough teeth to claim for all

the small, mutual murders; nor for the way
we became our disease.