Crash

My lips and lungs are cracked like ocean beds,

The weight of the water broiling

Their soft skin, the coins cast in

Scrapping away all excess,

Pruning me like a chandelier of thorns:

A hard place for anyone to sleep,

But for me - for me - whose arms

And legs were weaponised

Against the points, whose voice

Was twined against the grain of growth,

Whose head was hollowed for the rain

To sweat through me into bled life

The colour and texture

Of my vagrant laughter-sprigs,

It is as unbearable

As breathing

When a loved one cannot

As unbearable

As sleeping

When a loved one cannot

Unbearable and furious

As waves underwater

When a loved one cannot.