****** spittle drips from your lips
where once I tasted the proclivity
for hand rolled cigarettes and whiskey;
my saviour incarnate in a stranger’s fist.


I wear your words like welts upon my back,
five lashes, unseen by the eye yet palpable.
Lesions I pick, agape and weeping
like the feeble mouths of infants screaming. 


This was never mine to mourn.
I’m licking your wounds now, your finger in my own;
and back to you again I’m bourne.