you spit blood up into the river water
til your mouth is as clear and clean
as ****** tears: til your lips are
all embittered, sticky-soft;
tongue rolling over the back
of your teeth, you find the cold
has numbed you all through
from toes to hips to fingertips

hands rubbed rough with dirt,
she grasps in the dark for you
"so that’s that, then," she says
a voice like the scorned Lilith,
the weary Eve; she has been hurt
for the last time, the last ever
(you, on the other hand,
have only begun to ache)

among the grass your knuckles,
fresh and smarting, meet her palm
she spares one long lost look towards you
—and in her eyes will be your end
not unlike was his—
before she lays his clothes adrift,
spread out across the seafoam
funeral boats bound home

"that’s that," you echo,
and together now
you watch the water turn pink
pink like a bed of roses