Breaking open the body.

 

Until it becomes a competition to see who can hurt the other one more.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

i write you love poems
because i don't know how
to say i'm scared.

these words slide down your hips like a pair of pants that no longer fit but which you can not bring yourself to discard. you cinch them tight with a belt made from the clothesline you no longer have a place for - the landlord doesn't allow them in the courtyard. cluttered, he says. eyesore.

and so your underwear, your sheets, are relegated to the tiny orbit of the dryer which sometimes contains relics left behind by the neighbors you never pass in the hall: today a penny, hot to the touch so that it leaves a small red ring against your palm when squeezed. last week a small silver button you have placed in the bowl by the door. some days it gets tangled in your keys when you pick them up, and you imagine that its owner will stop by with a letter meant for you which was slipped into their box by mistake, will recognize the button and think that you are the sort of person who saves things. wrong, you think. you do not save things, but you can not bear to part with them.

you slip leaves between pages of books, then years later open them to find just the skeleton remaining. veins, you think.

 you think, decomposition. you wonder where the rest has gone.

you carry language inside you
as the truly faithful carry
their gods.

soft-bodied and diurnal.