spoken against the window pane,
your breath,
like flapping shingles of a roof in agony.
and,
tethered there in your hands,
inorganic flesh,
spews from open fingers -
curdled,
rotten.
you couldn’t look.
you couldn’t look.
this room is a cemetery.
this room holds only the dead.
in a brief moment,
the glass clears, the fog has lifted.
outside, bodies of decomposing trees
string their arms through the hairs of a setting sun,
and he,
he looks up at you with open eyes as the faucet drips,
the pipes creak,
the kettle, softens your futile screams with a thermal hiss.
how unbecoming of this boy,
exposing his insides with a lifeless heart in his chest.