I swallowed
the sound of your name
like it was a star--
five points,
the type they
teach you to draw
in kindergarten.
It hurt
on its way down,
stalagmites of constellation
catching on my uvula,
hanging on with
astronomical strength.
But this is no cliffhanger.
Do you know what happens next?
I stopped breathing.
You've never deserved
your name,
you know.
"Light giving,"
it means.
Oh,
and how I gave into
the sublime
fallacy
of it.
Because
all you ever did was steal
the moons from my irises.
You treated me like
I was the dirt beneath
your fingernails
(you forsake
the dust on your windowsill--
but don't you know
all dust comes from
the wondrous galaxy that
dwells before us?)
I reached out to you
only to get
c u t
o f f
at the hands
Still,
I couldn't let you
go,
didn't know how to.
Even when my flame
was reduced
to these weeping cinders,
even when the idealization
I held between my palms
found itself exiled
to this mausoleum
of severed trust,
hatred blossoming
in rosettes against
crumbling tombstones.
The epitaph reads,
"At a loss for words."
Tell me this:
what sort of
"light giver"
doesn't believe in
in the possibility of magic--
in the pinnacle of light itself?
You always thought me
a foolish girl
for dreaming--
naive girl,
silly girl,
wrists blooming
in paper cuts,
always one fairytale
away from insanity.
Until
one day,
I stopped believing
altogether.
And all it took
was a single glance
from those eyes--
glacial sapphires,
your grandest seduction.
Hell itself would have
hardened itself to tundra
at the sight of them.
You always had a way
of contaminating
the things I loved
with a frostbite so lethal,
I would have
gladly dismembered
every hypothermic part
of myself
(every fragment of soul
you ever touched).
Like a shooting star,
I fell for you--
hopelessly.
Catastrophically.
And then the heavens went
dark.
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(P.S. Use a computer to ensure an optimal reading experience.)
