In Ancient Rome the one and only synonym for beautiful was dead-
if that’s true, then I can never dig enough graves to put
you far enough into the ground. My brother gets drunk on cherry schnapps
and whiskey, once even rubbing alcohol when he was desperate enough.
The doctors had to put him under
before he would stop caressing the bottle tenderly like a lover.
Our cells are dividing at the rate of 126,438 per minute-
that’s faster than we’re prepared for.
So let’s pretend we’re comets, our tails burning bright in the night;
let’s pretend we’re lonely and lost and misunderstood.
Our bodies are like glaciers that are slowly colliding with one another
in the current: they’re being pulled down
in the wake of this ship.
Maybe one day the edges of ourselves will drag against one another
and we’ll grind to a halt on each other’s skin
before sinking slowly
into the headwaters below.
But the truest thing I ever heard was this: Lolita was just a girl
with a swollen heart, and like all girls with swollen hearts,
every one of them must break.