hey, wake up.
there’s that girl at the door for you again:
this time she’s got you a little cardboard box
full of withered browning poppies
straight from her garden;
rain-stained and trembling,
she’s got on the sourest of smiles.
she’s crowding your room with remains,
she’s teaching you self-preservation,
she loves you.

today, she’s knocking on your door
with the impatience of a devil;
yesterday, she’s holding your hand,
rolling the pads of her fingers
over every bump of your knuckles
complimenting your bone structure.
“when you die, give your body to science,”
she says, and you know that she means
‘give it to me’—you have already said yes
quite some time ago now.

today, you’re waking up,
you’re wondering the time,
you’re opening the door,
you’re saying hello i missed you.
it’s been fifteen hours.
you’re eating your heart out
and feeding her the scraps.
tomorrow, you're picking meat
from her teeth, just one little bird
that can't believe its luck.

she invites herself in, and you see
with a little stumbling delight
that she’s wearing those gloves you like,
oh, that soft old berry-red pair—
the ones that smell of ash and ink,
used matches and newspaper-print.
she peels them off her hands,
presses them into yours, and,
entirely shameless,
you grip them tight.

you savour their warmth,
you savour their feel.
you consider residual skin cells.
you consider honest infatuation.
neither of them seem to you
to be the truth and nothing but,
not quite, not wholly.
you love anatomy, you love her.
save the both of you some trouble
and don’t bother trying to choose.

she’s sitting on the edge of your bed
and she smells like old perfume
that wants to tell you it smells
like a summer day;
she’s kicking off her shoes,
she’s talking about cutting your hair:
where do you keep the scissors?
she’ll say she wants to paint your nails, too
but really she just wants to think
about tearing them out.

it’s hard to know but you think
you might want that too.
everything’s so complicated—
you just want to be beside her
so that’s where you are! now
she’s ******* crisp shrunken petals
right into your mouth. is she?
she’s got her nails on your lips either way.
you’re tasting nature at its end.
you’re just waiting to join it.

hey, wake up.