These men are ghosts
Repossessing my body

You fit religion into my mouth like a metal fillings
Before my tongue even learned the curvature of my own name
My thoughts hold no inkling apart from that which you bound to me
Such as I am empty
Fill me up, with no doubt for my cracks and chips
I am a humble vessel

If my body is a temple
As those who worship
The god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob profess
Then there is blood on the walls
If it is a temple
Who is it devoted to
Who will be the sacrificial lamb

I cannot be both temple and offering

You grow inside out
Out growing your skin
Like a snake sheds its corn husk past life

I outgrew myself
My passions, honesty and hope
Like a bomb in a building counts down to ten fastest
And is in an instant expired

When we are older
We will age like weeds in flower boxes on the third story
We will taste the rain before the surface of the earth
And we will dry out from the touch of the sun
Remembering how gently we craved for shade

The weight of time gets heavier if you let it
Said I love you, don't know if I meant it
I wait in the soil, like fresh turned grass
Holding my breath, hoping this will pass
Each passing moment is worse
But nothing truly hurts
I've heard your body does not remember pain
That it forgets it as quickly as it passed
If it is not pain then how do I know you
How do I remember
More than that, how do I let go

You say sleep when we're dead
I'm tired now

i. you to explain your anger

ii. you to slip slivers of ice
between the stacking of my spine
so that when I shiver it feels like an icicle shattering

iii. my tongue to remember your name so well, but unable to speak it for fear that it would be a potent spell and conjure out of the air

iv. you to tell me I'm pretty as if I didn't not already know

v. you to hold the gold of my heart as the highest currency, a debt paid against myself with every act of true self or kindness

vi. you to linger here like the taste of licorice and tobacco