His eyes were never as blue as that first night
while the sunset waved its yielding flags,
the landscape of his smooth back a blank canvas.
You wrote your name on my collar, that mendacious tongue,
but soap won’t expunge a brand that goes straight to the marrow.
To that bunker Brooklyn, a prison I broke you from,
inmates by our own curse, two criminals
Hades burned together in Eros’ slumber.
A bed in the attic, blue covers unkept,
the wind gasping against footprints we left in the hallway where our ghosts were hiding.
An abstract painting in a broken frame,
believing our love was a model reflection in a fun house mirror.
Clay never burned, gathering dust
in the basement of your mind
carefully molded and delicately forgotten.
You always made me drive. I hated driving –
pictured turning the wheel off the road and
becoming an eagle for hunt, for purchase.
My body painted by the sweat of others because you
didn’t enjoy the taste of my salt on your skin or the fire between my teeth.
I scream silent words of hatred into the throats of
someone else and pray that we can hear,
gnawing at the metal chains we bound,
the key a noose around your neck and
your hands behind your back.
Clawing from this rageful chapel, Daenerys in the flames,
searching for the spark we saw so far off in the distance.
Why were the walls so close, the air so thin, the bridge
so high we couldn’t see the water? Did I fall, or did you push me?
Maybe I chose to jump.
Birthing a love that died in our arms,
idle while it choked and withered,
but I still walk your route at twilight,
trace veins that feed my heart, cut me open and
I’d bleed out the color of you.