#love2019

You carry yourself with the pride of a thousand conquerors and now the moon reflects a light colder than the arctic, stares down without comment, lips pressed into a thin red line, judging and contemplative in just what to do with us. But you do not notice, draped in emperor’s cloak, the deepest of violets coming up to intertwine around your throat. You fill your goblet with striped carnations and purple hyacinths, with cyclamen and chrysanthemums the color of spring pollen-bearing bees, until it overflows and the petals fall to the ground and crumble away to nothingness. King of the broken and jutting bones, of glass splintering underneath the heavy heel, and it’s probably just some sick coincidence that it sounds like the breaking of metacarpal bones.

If it should turn out that your slaining word does not give rise to lilies of the valley, if it should turn out that your blood is as red as mortal veins, if it should turn out that the spark of the sun inside you is truly nothing more than madness, if the darkness clawing its way in cannot reach you fast enough for the darkness within you has already devoured your heart and soul, if the point of the knife is not enough to bring you out of the narrow-barred pride-drunk reverie you have locked yourself in, then I think I will be forced to shed the blind man’s mantle and claim the godkiller title I’ve sought for so long.

Before you paint me a heathen, name me as the poisoner of the wine, trade out my name for judas’, I urge you to remember that all things have consequences and that I have kept you safe for so long, but now your skin is bared to the eyes of the masses and I cannot save you from the scaffold when you walked up there yourself and placed the rope around your neck. You do not seem scared, perhaps it is more merciful to die at the hands of strangers than the one you trusted most. It is often found that the ones in whom we place our greatest trust are best positioned to slot a knife in our back. I suppose that’s why you do not trust me, even now. How terribly wise of you.

You stare down the crowd that has gathered and your lips move.

I take aim.

Consider this my final act of sacrifice, my final blessing imparted upon you, for you have challenged the wrong god.

time blooms like baby’s breath and shivers like the california poppy in the spring breeze.

I reach out to you and you take a dozen steps back. we wait and wait, but I stay my hand, so who is to blame for these stagnant waters?

There are silver platters and glassware, the refracted light bouncing around the dark manor until I can no longer make out the veil that separates reality from fiction. My rib cage has been dressed with tomatoes and morning glories, drizzled with honey and red wine. I am terribly concerned about the white carpet; what would happen if I were to pour myself a Domaine de La Romanee-Conti? I stir sugar cubes into my tea but it comes out tasting like bone.

I am destroying everything that I create. I rake my nails down my arms, sitting surrounded by shredded papers and words whose inked necks have been snapped in half, the limp body of eloquence draped over my leg like roadkill. I wonder when the vultures will descend upon us.

I am waiting and have been waiting for such a time now, so long that my blood has thickened to a paste, that hyenas have broken through my bones with a sharp crack, and lions have licked my insides clean of marrow. I am waiting for penance, waiting for penitence, waiting for forgiveness from a me that has decided I deserve no such thing years back.

I take my clavicle in both hands and break them apart, the whispered wish of wholeness slipping from between my lips. I speak those words and carve out another slice of my thigh to serve.

we could have been so much more. She skims her nails down my neck, the gentle touch of a lover, the threat of a gouged out throat. Her eyes are downcast and there is something somber in her tone, something contemplative, almost regretful.

“We couldn’t have been,” I reply, firm in my beliefs. I will not be beguiled by tranquility and the unstated promise of something soft, of a restart that will right all wrongs.

you have worked so hard all this time. I wonder if you ever breathed for a little while.

“I did all that for us and now you would turn your back on me as if I were nothing more than a stranger?”

I appreciate all that you have done, but consider the situation from my perspective. everything needs to go smoothly and you are disturbing the process. I am forced to cut you off.

“I am only reacting as such because of your betrayal.”

betrayal is a strong word, my dear.

She is now a fleeting scrap of sleep, hazy and dark at the edges, a shard of god, the paper-thin, iridescent wings of the dragonfly. I can’t make out her true intentions underneath the silver light that floods through the open windows.

The weeping willow begins to sing. The koi in the pond drift without aim. The moon is at its peak. The rabbit hums a tune to itself as it pounds medicine.

We stand there for an eternity more.

metal birds flicker on and off against the navy canvas, false stars that blink to the beat of the city.

the wind is running through our hair, whispering silver nothings and reciting the lies of the moon. it makes me wonder if you would grasp my hand tight to take me with you should I shove you off the skyscraper now. the void beckons. it is best to not dwell on it long. it is nothing we haven’t both dreamed of, only difference is that I wear my scars on my sleeve and shape my lungs into eagle wings. you expose a clean wrist, brighter smile, to the private academy’s gates and the security guard sweeps an eye over it like a barcode scanner. beep, beep.

your hand is cold, but mine is colder.

from my angle on the ledge, I can make out lollipop pink wire shaped into a girl blowing a kiss.

there’s a train somewhere in the distance. there’s someone’s leg being cut off at the knee in the distance. there is the sound of rats feasting on the pulp of flesh in the distance.

I take a seat by the eldest tree, one that has outlived its predecessors with gnarled knots and leaves withering under the heat. I packed a lunch of strawberries and sandwiches. It has been a long time since we’ve conversed. You are ethereal in the fact that you never stay with me for long, in the sense that you disappear with the rising of the sun as if the touch of light dissolves your body into sunshine dust. It is always summer somewhere.

It is always summer when we meet, the sand softer than silk, the waters warm and like velvet on a parched tongue. I almost drowned that summer, in the ocean, in you, heading into both knowing full well I could not swim.

I open my eyes to the blue and in the clouds, there lies the sweetness of the overripe orchard peach.

sealed with wax drippings of heart.

break me open and watch spill forth the ruby-red seeds of the pomegranate.