let me be prophetic
let me romanticize bones,
pearls embedded where teeth should be…

i am smoke and blood and poison
diamond chips for eyes, hard,
colourless & cracked facets
she is unstained
my skin every possible colour
every pockmark visible and ugly; every sacrifice
          carved in lines below my chin
ticking down the breaths
counting them, holding them lovingly
in the hollow of the throat
that they may blur together and strike a sickly rainbow
that she may find her salvation at the end of mine.