your body tastes like the warm
fruit left on the windowsill by the bed
where you held
me by the wrists
and let me rot
among red
sheets and potted
plants.

wandering hands
feel wonderful when you’re wanted—
when you want to be
wanted and warped by watched
wrists against red
sheets and warm
fruit.

forget it
and let it
rot

and drip from the edges
of my mind or this cot.
I wish I could call
it a mattress. but it’s
too thin and
too cold to keep me
warm, like the fruits
of your labor.

You’ve been working
too hard to get
me here to hold,
by the wrists,
and wrench
from myself.

let me
write these words
for me— hammered together—

nailing myself,
by the wrists,
to the tips
of these bedposts
in the bed framed
by the broken
plants and the rotting
fruit and the red
blood on the red
sheets.

You can’t see
the red in
the beds of my eyes
through the sheets of your
eyelids, pressed closed,
like the door is
to keep the demons

fresh as fruit
could be,
if it wasn’t left
on the windowsill
by the bed
in my head
that never leaves.