If it would make you love me I would lie back
And bottle the secret, concealing it underneath my rib cage like a bottled ship, the twigs and scraps of fabric decomposing like the bones of leaves, dry and crumbling into different dusts
Actually, I wouldn’t even ask you to love me, and I would still position myself in some sparse pretty purgatory for you
Sitting in silence, on cold to touch hospital like bed sheets
There is colour slicked inside my chest, thick in parts as if it were chocolate applied with a brush inside a mould but for you I would keep the light out in some dull opaque haze
Flecks of my soul are rainbow enamels but if I could I would reduce them to dull metal powders for you
I would give up all others because they have no clean sails unlike you
I would allow you all those one syllable words