When you ride your bike

’round that cul de sac,

does it follow your tracks by the second?

When you enter your room

is it waiting for you,

on the bed with its mouth wide open?

Do you know how it feeds?

Do you feel yourself bleed

as its teeth steal another bite?

What do you make of these wounds?

What are these scars to you?

Could the pain keep you up at night?

I know where it lives.

Once it’s filled to the brim,

it slips below the frame where you lie.

Your flesh soaks the sheets.

Tears fall as you sleep.

And it all begins again by sunrise.

Your voice is both the splitting wound and the balm. The day is distracting, but every night I face you again. I stand before the fault line snaking through the side of my heart. I stare into its darkness. I let it blind me. I let the tears fall into the deep.

I want to know what you want from me now. I want to show you that I can be strong. I want to feel safe with you always. Can you still be my safe haven when you're so far away?

I feel something aching. I feel sick. I feel loved. I was loved, wasn't I? Am I still loved? Is it true that death is only physical? Does only the holiest of love prevail?

My skin yawns

talking back to you

My blood tongues the air

confronting you

The wound you split

is a Mouth

is a flooding Cave

just south of my chest

Hear the whispers within

They beckon you

into the crimson

Put your fingers there

in the warmth

Let the blood taste you

The flesh yawning wider

as I speak to you

like never before

If you were nature, I’d view you from afar

Safe on a paved road

While I stare into evergreen

Tall erections of wood, of firmness

Like the bicep and shoulders

Holding upright a statement

I apparently can never carry

A filament that bulks clothing

and accessories

and languages of the body

I see you

Bold against white light

Just as you stood before the sun at home

But we are not there anymore

And I am but a shadow that follows you

Weak in the day

Finding freedom in the dark

I try and fail

to emanate what I once was…

(skin and bone and pleasure for you)

…I hide behind you all the same

Underneath your weight

I covet your heroism

The way you best this hand of nature that has twisted me so

The ocean recedes

Breathe in deeply

Retract the knife

and something commences

Before the crimson is a moment of silence

The skin still clean, the water still blue

The blade the only evidence

This feat falters for just a second

As the heart grips tight

To what? It doesn’t know anymore

So it slowly loses might

And the moment ends

The feat resuming

The blood rushing

Like the ocean’s release

Like a final exhale

and only you witness this

Only you stand on this beach

I hold the fear right next to my heart

crammed inside the cage of ribs

pressuring my lungs to burst

With every inhale

In one exhale you broke away

After months of holding you close

So close you became a mechanism

A match for the candle

A hand for the fight

In a breath I was left alone

without a flame to feed

Or a fist to clench

And the fear eats away at my muscle

Coagulates the blood to obsidian

Nightly, I dream of your return

I dream of you softening me

Your hand crushing that black rock to dust

Nothing ever comes away easy

Not the bandage on your knee, nor the wax under your arm

Not the ink in the carpet, nor the scratch in the wood,

Not the bruise on your skin, nor the welt underneath

It comes away slow, drags heavily upon the earth

Like the weakening soul and its drudge to the grave,

Like the babe inching its way out of the safety of a womb

Come away, slow and reluctant,

Resisting the hands that gather you up

And raise you to a harsh brightness,

And welcome you to a world unknown

Past the whiteness and into the pupil

I find only death and the black beyond

An obsidian I fold into with ease

I’m damned to bleed away and fall forever into infinity

But deep in the center

Is a heart that belies the darkness

A pool with endless waves of innocence

Holding colors that reflect something lost inside me

I hear the oceanic whisper amongst my mortal consumption

So soft and yearning, it calls me tender

And I’m inspired now to dredge the tar

And conquer the thickness between us

I want to find solace from the nightmare

I want the Heaven that waits in the water

You’re a soldier of a grim war.

It wages on and

You age on, becoming weathered like a letter torn, like a blunt sword

The only sharpness left is the knife end of forgiveness

As you blend into the wilderness

You could say you were faithless

There’s no God in the bloodshed

And no hope for the helpless

You age on like letters fainting off wilting paper

Leaving only the soiled thought that I alone could be your savior

But then, something is born out of the darkness

With only blood it manifests

To pull you toward the emptiness

To leave behind all your regrets

It’s an angel of the Earth

The right hand of nature true

It knows how to handle something weathered like you

It cleanses the wood of sin, the last trace of your will

Leaving only the silence of a forest ever stilled