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for you, an elegy, a thousand times over

When I tried to fill my pockets with stones and step into the river

you removed them one by one and cast them away after saying

my heart was already so heavy it would weigh me down

far faster than any piece of limestone.

In class I repeat your name aloud in my head, twenty times,

thirty if I’m feeling extra OCD, just one girl praying at your altar,

remembering how your mouth fell like holy wine over my spine

and the first time you left me I threw the computer out the window

until I heard the glass screen crash onto the lawn below and that-

that’s the sound of my heart. My father asked me why I was so obsessed

with fruit flies and I said because they only live for thirty days;

if I were one I’d get to spend a whole month with you.

You’re so beautiful landslides wish they could throw themselves

down your skin; I’ve seen a tsunami pause in its path

over a shuddering village just at the sound of your name

and the safety razor crossing my left wrist already knew

your mouth would cover the wounds it left behind

so it didn’t even try as hard as usual this time.

The second time you left Satan sent a postcard to God

begging for His forgiveness if it only meant you’d come home again;

sometimes there’s soy milk in the cupboard

but not enough orange juice so you buy 32 cartons just for me

in the middle of the night and I wish I could praise

all the dangling red roots leading to your heart

because every time I wanted to tie a noose around my neck

you made me tie it around those ventricles instead;

even when the bloodflow shut off you said you still loved

every frequency that vibrated from my body

even on the bad days

when I was just a 9.8 on the Richter Scale

waiting for someone to come cut me down.


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