Last night you handed me glass to swallow,
shards to choke on,                       and I did.
I choked.
Blood immersed my lungs.
It flooded around my kidneys, my bladder, my colon,
brimming the muscular tendrils near my nerves.
Slivers knife the tissue enclosing
a once-pounding-for-you heart.
The soul I sold to you, for
you, is polluted beyond preservation.
It’s the extinct ***** in my body,
a hearth of life no longer there.

You yell at me for something I cannot help;
force me to ignore beliefs when I must deny.
I understand you see no room to budge.
I accept that it’s hard to grasp.
But if you call for me, I’ll run         run         run             to you,
and I can’t help that I love you:
the way you coerce my body to throb
and pump blood               through and through
though sometimes you clot it.
Your lips, magnetic, lure me near,
forcing an opening to suffocate
me as spidery limbs finger my veins
leaving traces of your web to tangle
me whole.

You’re my stonefish gliding
towards exposed skin, preparing
to attack with neurotoxins.
As ashamed am I
that only you are the antidote, too
even in great blue waves swallowing me
like I once did glass
in the end
                                                            I­ still sleep in your sweatshirt.