LUKECOHOON

whatever spirits we created here are gone; the light is spilling through all the bullet holes in the walls. the arsonist reconsidered but my body still feels like it’s been doused in gasoline. i might not be a hollowed, smoking building but i could be burning. something small and campfire where people gather to tell ghost stories. the suburbs can’t hold us anymore so we escape to the forest where all the trees have eyes. i don’t flinch when they see me anymore; the life I led before strangled all the fear out of me. instead, i am full to the brim with blood and venom and venom. let them find me, let them try and wrestle the secrets from this skin. love isn’t here anymore but i’m no longer left starving for it; grasping hands in the dark aren’t the same nourishment anymore.             they told me i was good for nothing but isn’t dying an art? i come back every day and that used to be considered the holiest of talents.

i. something under the floorboards doesn’t want to stay buried: you told him you never felt holier than when you were under his arching body. there were never any gods to be worshipped there, nothing religious about what you did to each other. you can break your teeth on love again and again but don’t pretend that the result was stigmata. “I would kill you if any part of you were still alive.”

ii. something nauseating about nostalgia. maybe the dead should stay there. after what happened to me, I can’t drink lemonade without thinking what was hidden inside. every summer my mother makes a pitcher that tastes like carpet burns on my knees, incisors at my throat, how tempting the edge of the balcony looked. iii. I wanted to call this poem a lesson in levitation. teach everyone how to float above those picket fences hiding pets buried in the garden, baby teeth wrapped in lace, tarot cards reading the same warning over and over.

iv. can’t be all bad; what was the name of the song we sung? something beginning with forgiveness or maybe thank god we’re still here. because we wake the ghosts to remind us what haunts us, remind me not every ghostly childhood is lonely. he never meant i love you the way I did. what happened to him? killed him, turned his body into poetry lines. thank god he was good for something. v. history taught me a lesson in survival:

call it a brave act when you wake up in the morning: today you wake up with no dirt under your fingernails and no splinters in your palms: there was never a right way to bury all of these bones but – today -  thankfully, you don’t need to worry about how deep that grave needs to be. today, every crime you committed doesn’t follow you, today, every bruised knuckle, every cigarette burn, every poem you wrote on your arms in everything but ink

                 has time to recover.

that night, he drew you a bath and lit all the candles, touched all of your scars like holy scripture. he washes your hair; the water is no longer running red. everything in this room is golden and smells like lavender. even orpheus couldn’t sing you to sleep here. if we go, we go together. is this how this poet loves, gorging himself on love whenever he can? pretending angels? soft & gentle, feathers being plucked like leaving miracles.      you had to ruin your shoulder blades raw to grab all those bloody offerings, but god wasn’t it worth it, to leave behind something that shines in the dark? that leads people home, that leads people.        I want to kiss you, he says, and you hand him another wounded part of you.      

it’s summer and you’re ravenous: you split yourself stupid open on the concrete, leaking something everyone could smell from three streets away. this is not a dream you can wake up from, not a dream you can say goodbye to. this is now your life. your mouth tastes like a butcher’s floor. you didn’t throw up your hands to stop yourself from falling and god knows it wasn’t the first time you’ve done something like this. wrapping yourself in bandages and it not being a Halloween costume. entering the emergency room for the third time in a month and joking that it feels like home. here’s the thing; home can’t always be a person, can’t always be a place, home is just your body and aren’t you tired of leaving the door wide open? letting people let themselves in and never leaving – trailing their dirty feet along your floors, leaving leftovers to rot, hanging up their bloody coats on your walls?

does it matter how I came back? the important thing is that I did. no table is complete without a funeral wreath, mother is still in the kitchen polishing silverware. she’s been there for days, now; her hands are covered in blood. father is outside in the garden, planting something that used to breathe; his shovel never looked so dirty. he’s also covered in blood but none of it is. look, i told you - it doesn’t matter how I came back. some dead things simply don’t want to stay buried. would you have noticed if I told you the sky was empty? would it have mattered? my love; he dulled all the blades for me. gently took my wrists like they weren’t connected to something that wants to kill me.