Cut close, to the chaste, and hold fast.
I always have been tired, and I've lost the energy to ask
In roundabout ways if you too feel pain -
You are the ice that all at once numbed my fingers
and made me feel again.
I go to bed to digress.
I've lived, and given, and breathed so deep,
all I can do now is think of you, and sleep.

I'm bleeding through, quite viscerally.
And I'd hate to beg of you a hand to staunch the wound,
but I'll barter with the you I once knew -
to take these bits of me you touched and chewed
and pull the skin right off.
Because although the taste of it is tough
A wound of you is still by you,
and its company will have to do.