You can play
with the tension
and not get caught,
but you can never
break it;

not when nerves
are taut telephone lines
purring with electricity;
thick enough to chew.
The cracks are deep
enough to bury a secret,
swallow each perforated promise,
and each broken beacon.

I can feel your pulse
racing against mine.
I can't tell whose heart is beating
and whose is beat.
We are two sticks of dynamite
in the same trophy tin:
sparks of breath singeing skin,
we hold each other up
until we hold
each other down.

The rules of war change
with your mood,
the laws of physics
are putty in your hands,
and the tides of time
are your own
collapsing conspiracy-
a house of cards you reshuffle
and repossess as the candle burns
a circle of wax on the table.

I can’t decide if you want to devour me
or decimate me—
adore my halo
or annihilate my hope,
love me with your whole heart
or wreck mine with your whole weight.
And you can’t decide either,
can you?

The light is unkind,
the land unforgiving,
and you are all
my favorite lies;
the canvas of my
incomplete portrait,
the crossed out pages
of my abandoned poems.

You can play with your edge
or throw me off it.
Either way, I'll be yours to keep
or yours to conquer.
I won’t tell you how to ruin me,
or beg you to spare me
from your rabid reign—
I’m not that kind of country.
I’m an open border;
a shattered compass,
spinning wildly.

But I will say:
the ruins
are all that’s left when
the empire falls,
all that’s real when the
games are done,
all that’s preserved
when the tension eases
and the maps are redrawn,
again and again.

I'll send a postcard
to your grave.