I disbelieved at first,
Remembering your pianist fingers dragging through my hair. Remembering
My hand in yours, you turning it over, marveling at the smallness.
Yet in the truest corner of my thoughts
I knew my time was running out; you had said you loved her,
Somewhere unrecorded, hopefully.

So this death dirge soft shrill in my ears - this nagging unconsciousness,
This plodding inevitability, reached its crescendo and bellowed.
Discontent to pass quietly, it trumpeted like a drunken elephant,
The Third World clash of car horns and splitting concrete,
Constant and irredeemable.

Hughes swallowed Plath like a pike. No one
In your charade did such a thing, ever managed to
Consume the other. Still, it was a dance of
Damnation, spiraling around your loose definitions,
Waiting with bated breath for someone to fall into mediocrity. The
Slave can never rule the master. Remembering
You on your knees before her, begging for a sip of
Non-alcoholic beer - I wanted to ***** so badly,
From jealousy, from lust, from sheer disgust. I was a slave
Worshiping a slave. In that moment, we were finally near-equals. I hated us both.

It hurt. You dabbed distilled water
Onto the cuts you accidentally created, standing up to
Defend me from prying friends and awkward moments, but never
From yourself. Not that I needed to be. The ache from the unit of you
Was exquisite. I was so distracted by the burn -
So used to lying in cliched darkness, so refreshed to be slain daily by resurrection -
That I failed to hear the first drums of funeral march renew.