He watched her grow out her fingernails
Burn herself with cigarettes
Her scabs would heal and morph into gray dots on her dark flesh
She looked like a winter afternoon with a chance of showers

She was beautiful in her own way
The way books are beautiful stacked on shelves
The way trees can only be appreciated in forests
Her beauty was of many and of one.

I saw you lying prostrate in your bed of bones and crumbs
the white sheets were stretched to reveal your garbage heap,
your nest a collage of street trash
you hoard yarn and plastic dolls with missing eyes
combing your hair with toothpicks and cleaning your teeth with vinegar

You blew the layers of dust that settled on your window sill
And your prickly legs laid tangled against your cool walls that had been painted over too many times
The paint would chip off into peachy piles
The original wall, an ancient artifact, poking through for air

You smash the little bodies of spiders under your thumb
smearing their entrails against the glass
studying the life you’d just taken against the rays of the sun
And I watch as you tear off your fingernails, their jagged edges scratching down my back

I try to fall asleep to your hums and shallow breathing
drowning in your little commune for the lost and forgotten
the relics of the city
Your little kingdom of pots and pans, of skeletons and guts
and red-rimmed eyes

I wrap my arms around your sticky skin, it’s greenish hue playing tricks under the light of the moon
I’m merely swimming off your coast, marooned on your island
watching you from afar, among your treasures