I pick at my past with a scalpel
Clumsy, desperate
Leave no stone unturned
lest there be blood underneath

I pick and pick and leave myself raw
Spilling on the pristine floor
of your easy conscience
The life not examined

I pick off the shrapnel carefully
where melds with flesh
I know I don't look like myself
but you'll get used to it

I am not capable of love but I want you
with all my selfish rationality
and greed and hidden naivete

I will not thaw for you but
I'll let you into my thoughts and maybe even
my rarely coaxed joie de vivre

I want you beside me in everything
I want you and a car and a blur
of endless highways diners motels

I am not capable of love but I adore
your tough shell and tender innards
I want to be your partner, your equal

Neither of us believe in soulmates
we are already complete
inhuman in all the best ways

And we found each other
and settled into a strange fit
in our monstrous forms

They say we accept the love we think we deserve
But consider this: we give back the love we've been offered

I am the infinite capacity to hurt, cut deep
I would destroy you - Apollo
Creature of music and hope
I rather hope I never have the chance to

I see you and try to imagine what it could feel like
to be loved carefully, cradled
Swathed in your light

now he's nothing but a death certificate
empty beer bottles; liquor store receipts
traces of the life unlived

nothing but the knife under his pillow where he always kept it
old photographs of a stranger and his dog tags around my neck
rust on his motorcycle
his wasted brilliance, his weak heart

i forget for a moment that he's gone
and it comes rushing back and just like that I lose him again
and again.
and again.

there is something savage in the way
it turns to dust,
elusive, never happened

drunken withered flowers and sleep
delightful welcome escape
from strangled tar-black thoughts

and then you emerge from ashes
and death, you live, you know enough
to compare extremes.
and feel ever more,
feel too much

feeling leaves me a newly free bird
comes back rushing next morning
uninvited

whoever said i want you to be mine
to be embraced by tar-black eyes
clouded with lust and longing they bare all

you ache for solace
I would only strip you naked,
open you up, leave you drained.

I'm not allowed your name in my mouth any more so these days I just call you "the void"

Black hole looking glass girl
Sweet reckless fury
Spiteful child with her dolls and trinkets and you made her angry you beast you monster

I tore at you like an animal curiously open and if I saw you I'd fall to your feet I think
And with my words I'd retrace my mark on you: mutually branded, thorn to thorn, wound to wound

You're a person to someone but to me you're medicine I chase the bitter of
And more common wounds need not apply