is it wrong to think of yourself as some
kind of god or would you love to worship me
in the dark /
where the others will never see you kneel. you shiver / seeing me above you / that's your purpose and your ending / your fists
clutching at soil and your fingers
twisting in sheets. say god
again and when you do
i want it to be another version of
my name.

i wish we'd stopped when i asked you to but our hands
were heavy with alcohol / or just you. you said i smelled of whisky
and desire and i didn't say anything you cared about / we swapped memories
and in this version it's me, doing the pushing and
pulling and cutting and we make up. we do this to ourselves / to our dogged hearts / 'til our tongues go red
from screaming.

all is dark
and the sun set for the last
time, tonight. we watched it sink / you and you and all the versions of me and them.
they'll drown
battered in the tide. it takes them, and me. it takes and eats. we hear it feast, bellowing. i rage at the stars for watching and at me, for wishing / i break my own hands
in pounding on the earth, begging her to open /

did you know that our world
is ending
and i've never seen the ocean?

sometimes we need no beginning ; or ending. only meeting them
at the right moment, when the stars or the gods / or the gentle and raucuous earth, overfull on maudlin sorrow / move us into this moment. you ease into my life as if you never left / you will stay; 'til i forget when you came and when you leave again and i follow and we circle, like stars, atom and dust to dust to hopeful ashes, always reaching, reaching for the moment
we meet /

again.

hello: welcome home.

dear: [redacted]
had a dream about you / body in the water. you held onto the
poolside with two shaking hands and when you saw the look
in my eyes you considered holding me under
/ drowning the spite right out of them. it would’ve worked but
this was my dream, about you and i killed you first / killed you ‘til
my knuckles turned white / to the sound of the hush hush water / to the last
gurgling breath.

the poem stops for nobody like a speeding heart
or the screeching car. i saw one
crash and it was too dark too quiet too loud too much glass all over the pavement and i thought, first, of who would pay for that old fence to be replaced .  i worried about the pennies and pounds once the smoke cleared and a man stumbled out, angry / ashamed / scarlet-cheeked, scarleteen, no blood . he got loud and i had a camera and did not hesitate to hide it from sight / anti-spectator syndrome. it was too dark too loud too quiet and i am not a mood-breaker, smelling smoke
as it turns and twists, over and over,  acrid and dark
against the night.

the jewelled hands. a finger each /
peel the skin and let her blood
meet the air. this is
unbecoming of a lady / she says i will
never marry; her mouth curves
around her
laugh, beckoning. taunting /
if you keep going ; lover
i'll be yours
always / and he drinks her in. consumption / consummation / salt and iron and lust. how have they lived
so long
he wonders, inside her, on her, in himself,
how could they breathe
without it ?

maybe i did something wrong or maybe it isn't about me at all
but i just didn't want to lose you this time. you, my maybe.
you, my almost.

here - take. have it
in your hands. does it smell
like fear
or the absence of noise? does it think
like you or does it do things you never wanted? does it make you gasp
and shiver? do you dream of it in the night and
does it make you believe in things like smiling
when you should be begging forgiveness and kissing in the pew and the rose garden / heavy wrinkled hands
prying back the curtain to
watch them go at it by the bus stop?

if so.

    this is love. hold it close and tight and real gentle. like you’d touch a star ;
unbelieving. that the light doesn’t burn you flesh through to bone
but sinks in, grateful
for a home.

queer, beloved | talia b. ; @raggedhearts