I’m insane to breathe your name,
but there’s nothing else to say 
                                as the daylight comes,
              bleeds down honey-like 
into my open palms, 
crystalizing the wound into
so many monuments of your absence,
                                then your begging,
                                as you’re begging
like you regret your loneliness.

But you don’t regret the white-hot
you’d kiss the knife you cut me with.

Turned me inside out like lightning,
searing new patterns into the art,
new versions of our lives
            playing out in heads
                          breathing underwater.

What is there to do but watch
myself become yours then
                               become nothing.
             Now it’s easy to regrow
my limbs with practice
until I am who I want.

Now I’m this girl I love,
you’re still waiting on someone.

Craving something to soothe you,
need another face darting in the silver
to watch the expression of,
                                  to dissect
                   and pin down
        with every sharp bone
in your body,
need a body to take from.

Because you had someone who loved you
once,

and you had no reason to disappear,
dancing into the white heat of spring,
and now you want someone to love you.

                             What was I but love?

When you build a life cluttered in rubble
how do you find your own hands drowned
in the darken river of your mind?
You cannot get clean in dirty water,
you cannot give forgiveness holding a knife.

You cannot apologize.

You’re noosed on the telephone cable
calling me through guitar strings,
nosediving into lyrics and relics,
smothering my best dreams bad,
summoned by a half-faded image
      of a girl
            who adored you,
                  her mind oilspilling 
                     into every bright space
                         to kill what you loved.
I’ll make your twisted fantasies
uncoil in front of your dark eyes, 
         smiling.
            I’ll take my hand
               in my own hand
                  and dissolve to ash.

Love is a burning feeling after all,
that’s what you had me believe.

After the flood, her dancing wreckage,
I’m leaving signs for you like angels do.
They’re all all landing outside my window
and you’re not here at all, thank god
calling me into the killing light,

the silence runs like river water,
I am whole again, regrown like you said
beyond that sick mirage.

I’m leaving you like I’m a dead thing
hissing from under your mattress,
and I’d rather be dead to you
than alive, drowning in the halls
of your handmade hell.

It was not a gift, my dear.
It was a haunting,
                       a begging,
           a begging,
a begging.