so you sew your melancholy shut –
pour your father’s ***
on the stitches
like you always do
i turn my back and bend over –
ache descending my backbone
where your kisses used to rest;
it recoils in instinct
as i keep on digging for the same mistakes
on skinfolds and chromatic bruises
and thin walls where i hung
my tendency to ache
scrubbed out of me like dead skin,
as i lie, washed, stripped, and tender
in these soft, celestine sheets;
i pepper bits and pieces of myself
to diffuse the hurting
but my pain is blinded;
yours, all-seeing
as i draw my three of swords
from my deepest deck of cards
but there’s already an epigraph
of your name on my clavicles
and you see how your all-elysian, moon-drenched lover
is all tainted, all this time,
and darling, how alive you felt
when you fell in love with this disaster
but the truth is staying in love
will always be your death.
and what i know to be deathless love
is now lost in our ghastly lights
and how we danced with liquid fire
long enough to feel it burn
but all roads lead to rome, darling –
all roads lead to ruin
and all the letters i wrote you are banners
burning in its cathedrals
as roman gods watched us
pick our limbs apart.
and do you think
we can love each other through this,
touch our way out,
love our way out of these
wars we waged —
burning houses,
mess we made
kisses dead in our stately wake
this love — this feeling
spilling like ether, leaving
squandered poems
all over the place.
had you known it all along
had you walked away?
but darling how alive you felt —
how alive we felt in love
but one day you’ll call it crucifixion
and i’ll call it back my death.
and we fall like sacred dust,
a bedlam of debris.
and i draw my three of swords:
dead-cold steel
and paper-soft sorrows.
do you think we have it in us to love each other out of this?
