Jul 2018
The moon swallowed around a mouthful of bile and blood,
sangria rising in its throat,
orange knocking on its forehead and honeysuckles falling at its feet,
and turned its back on its humble worshippers.
I threw my bridal bouquet backwards into the ******* void and fell onto the shore,
the sea chasing my heels
angry at only having itself to fight and we laughed. We laughed and the world laughed back, the flowers and bees and dust settling where you left.
Everywhere was where you left.
You were gone
and the house was about to burn, burning, burnt so
I told my teacher my homework burnt and she gave me an F and I told her my heart was ash and she gave me an F and my throat filled with cinder and my lungs filled with copper. My lungs filled with copper, rotted away the gold
and with the gold gone I began to
shame myself, for I was imperfect.
I was imperfect and I was
marble and I was copper and I couldn’t feel
my hands or my feet or anything, anymore.
The moon left and it took away my lungs and my knuckles and left me bleeding in the
stairwell on my birthday,
ruined.
I was copper and kerosene and ruined,
soiled, in its abandon. I lay fallow and my eyes had shutters and the clouds were
suddenly antediluvian in their loss and in their weight, heavy and
waiting for another chance to unite the sea with the earth and the earth with bile and the bile with holy water: the floods were coming.
The water would pour, was pouring, poured and my gold-turned-copper rusted and I couldn’t move to chase after you and then you were gone.
I can’t blame you.
I would leave too, if I could.
But my joints froze over like the dead in the lake and you were gone so I had no reason to fight to free myself, or anyone else.
Before you left, I told you if this means anything then carve it on a cave wall and draw me in blood but you didn’t hear me because the door had already
shut.
My whispers didn’t reach. I knocked from the inside, but you had locked it.
I knocked from the inside
but my wrist snapped
and then I snapped and then the world snapped back. I looked through
the window in the door and the bars
framed your shoulders like pillars
of some ancient grecian coliseum, of some Shakespearean tragedy, or trees in a forest.
Trees, the space between them,
and the earth beneath our feet, crumpling like origami and folding like cards.
The ground shattered and so did my heart, the trees fell and so did my hopes, the birds fled as the sky bled out, pink and purple and red, and they took my hands with them so
I couldn’t do anything. I had no hands,
how could I work?
But someday the birds must land. And someday I will oil my joints, my rust will break. The moon will come home and the clouds will deplete. Someday my hands will attach onto my wrists backwards, and I will write you love letters backwards, and we will live, happily, backwards.
sangria rising in its throat,
orange knocking on its forehead and honeysuckles falling at its feet,
and turned its back on its humble worshippers.
I threw my bridal bouquet backwards into the ******* void and fell onto the shore,
the sea chasing my heels
angry at only having itself to fight and we laughed. We laughed and the world laughed back, the flowers and bees and dust settling where you left.
Everywhere was where you left.
You were gone
and the house was about to burn, burning, burnt so
I told my teacher my homework burnt and she gave me an F and I told her my heart was ash and she gave me an F and my throat filled with cinder and my lungs filled with copper. My lungs filled with copper, rotted away the gold
and with the gold gone I began to
shame myself, for I was imperfect.
I was imperfect and I was
marble and I was copper and I couldn’t feel
my hands or my feet or anything, anymore.
The moon left and it took away my lungs and my knuckles and left me bleeding in the
stairwell on my birthday,
ruined.
I was copper and kerosene and ruined,
soiled, in its abandon. I lay fallow and my eyes had shutters and the clouds were
suddenly antediluvian in their loss and in their weight, heavy and
waiting for another chance to unite the sea with the earth and the earth with bile and the bile with holy water: the floods were coming.
The water would pour, was pouring, poured and my gold-turned-copper rusted and I couldn’t move to chase after you and then you were gone.
I can’t blame you.
I would leave too, if I could.
But my joints froze over like the dead in the lake and you were gone so I had no reason to fight to free myself, or anyone else.
Before you left, I told you if this means anything then carve it on a cave wall and draw me in blood but you didn’t hear me because the door had already
shut.
My whispers didn’t reach. I knocked from the inside, but you had locked it.
I knocked from the inside
but my wrist snapped
and then I snapped and then the world snapped back. I looked through
the window in the door and the bars
framed your shoulders like pillars
of some ancient grecian coliseum, of some Shakespearean tragedy, or trees in a forest.
Trees, the space between them,
and the earth beneath our feet, crumpling like origami and folding like cards.
The ground shattered and so did my heart, the trees fell and so did my hopes, the birds fled as the sky bled out, pink and purple and red, and they took my hands with them so
I couldn’t do anything. I had no hands,
how could I work?
But someday the birds must land. And someday I will oil my joints, my rust will break. The moon will come home and the clouds will deplete. Someday my hands will attach onto my wrists backwards, and I will write you love letters backwards, and we will live, happily, backwards.
