you left
and suddenly i realised
why we started naming storms
after people.

it’s starting to feel like I enjoy doing things that remind me of you
like being emotionally unavailable
or becoming untranslatable when I tell him something vague about where I’ve been
i’m sure you spoke those words to me
it feels strange now, embodying the lies you fed me
but I’m just as hungry and
All the fresh fruit become rotten eventually

i think I like having casual *** as a way to say *******
******* for making me unable to love
unable to enjoy anyone else
ruining me for everybody
for making me feel like I was hard to love and easy to lose
i still stare at scars and tears flicker through the overlapping years
At what point did my bare skin became stained?
At what point did you carve your name?

you were my storm drained rock
i couldn’t keep it together in the rain
maybe rivers flow through and through
and she led you back to the pacific
It was a specific night;
I came back to the edge of that lake before
The only thing that had changed was I enjoyed it more when I was with you

raindrops trickled on that lake; the reflections blurred
there where blue skies and white clouds before
now it’s you and her
and I just can’t unsee it

after anti-lamentation by dorianne laux

Regret nothing. Not the true-crime shows that kept you up in morbid curiosity,
Anticipation and cynicism you couldn’t help but chase like Pandora’s box,
A price you paid with the death of childhood ignorance.
Not the hours you spent trying to delude yourself into forgetting,
Trying to bring the fantasy worlds in your fictions to life as a distraction,
Only for them to be tainted by the blood of your supposed savior,
Not the nights you woke up in the purgatory of consciousness held down by restraints,
Inescapable regardless of how much you tried to urge your muscle nerves to just move;
You broke the rules - your mind your prison,
something you could sense but would never truly understand.
You were born to live an unfulfilled life,
Half of you chasing comfort in the warmth of the radiating body in the sky,
Only for the other to seek its death - to watch a being of vast power, provider of light,
devolve into infinite darkness - emptiness warping space and time, void of destruction.
You’ve been here before, sat in front of fate dealing her cards,
Only for her to reveal the fool, just like she had the last time, and the time before that.
Regret none of it, not one of the countless sleepless nights you’ve endured,
Not one of the days you walked through the world with your vision spinning,
Permanently blinded by the haze that stood between you and affirmation.
You’ve been blessed with a beautiful gift, so relax.
Don’t bother thinking about escaping the fog,
The way that it consumes your mind with unanswerable questions,
An uncontrollable desire to chase against your rationale.
I mean, you asked for it, didn’t you?

dear eurydice,
what did it feel like to die twice?
did it hurt more the first time,
weaned onto the sticky honey of love,
only to drown in the sugar as it turned to poison?
or did it hurt more the second,
when you were already bled dry,
to once more hear the siren’s song of your beloved,
only to be gutted by his greed?
did it feel more like a stab and a twist,
or was it more of a thud, then emptiness?
did you die a third time,
when you realized your beloved had run out of chances,
and that you had forever sunk?

///

eurydice, i heard a little rumor
that orpheus used to sing to you under the stars.
did his songs paint you a perfect little world
"for your eyes only" he would say
the way that my love did for me?
one that locked away all your fears,
washing across your vision
until it was tinted over with rosemary?
tell me eurydice,
did you dream of orpheus’ song
like i dreamed of my supposed savior,
humming sweet promises
that couldn’t be kept?

///

did you know, eurydice,
the first time i drowned,
i too had been the victim of a viper?
its venom had blinded me first,
it cursed me with sight;
i saw the world unraveled,
bared in all its debauchery
as savagery unsheathed silence,
nailing women to the cross,
and children to their graves;
an utter panem et circenses
while society watched them bleed.

did you know too,
i was smothered in honey,
just like you?
i tasted the sugared ashes
of the skies unfolding,
as stars turned to bombs in the air,
one little boy crying,
and one fat man dying;
society had found its penance
a faux but effortless salvation.

i like to think it was a blessing:
a little gift, the anesthetization that followed,
how the viper had wrangled out my lungs,
emptying me before i could breathe again,
only to find toxins rather than faith pouring in.
i can’t help but wonder, eurydice,
why were you given your lungs back,
if only temporarily?
did it feel good to have that final breath,
a final glimpse of your favorite delusion,
even if you had already fallen?

///

they say that everyone is born twice:
once on the day their umbilical is untangled and cut,
and once on the day they untangle their own mess;
but what happens when you die a third, a fourth,
and a fifth time before you are born again?
i ask this to you eurydice,
because it seems, like you,
i am already dead.

and when he told me
he’d **** himself if i left,
a part of me believed him.
a small stupid part of me,
foolish, young and naive,
wanted to believe that i’d meant that much
that the lack of my presence
would make his blood run cold,
leaking into the creases of the bathroom tiles.
if i left,
and he killed himself.
his blood would be on my hands
but unlike my blood on his,
this time it would be metaphorical
but would feel so much worse.