eighteen

my love, if my pain was paraded / my blood drawn, my scars recorded / would my love cringe, would my love even blink?

my throat groans, though my love’s ears are deaf / come near, my love, for men cannot save me, if / the lips of my love are faithless

chin against my chest, my love, my heart spills its dread / without thought for a single moment / i would become brother to the dead

my longings have long been set / aside by my love, my sheets are wet / from the nights i have begged, oh i beg

am i a ghost that i should be missed? / am i a beast that my love should ridicule my torment? / am i a fool that my cries should be dismissed?

my tongue clings to my mouth’s palate, my skin / is broken, my love has forgotten / my precious life, the grave has left me tempted

my love, our garden has been overtaken by weeds seeded / by my love leaving that sting my legs, & cut my chest / my love, am i forsaken?

my love, i am lonely, conversing with curtains / bedroom blinds become my closest friend / rejected even by my love, i am desolate

my love’s face is hidden feeding my loneliness / i am fed from my love’s hand the bread / of tears, my bones are counted on my love’s fingertips

my love, i thought i was too strong for this / to relent to this struggle that haunts me still, haunts me still / i ache for my love’s deliverance

my love, the smell of failure is stronger than sweat / from the intimacy of my love i am distanced / my guilt is a burden i, i cannot lift

my love hangs my sins tight around my neck / dangles forgiveness before my fingers to inflict / even more misery, my love, have i not suffered enough?

my love, i am in pain, my head / is framed by thorns my love’s eyes have twisted / by their blank expression when i am afflicted

o my love, senseless desperation has no innocence / she grinned when she left my wrists in shreds / my love looked on when she broke them

despair murders me with hopes that become distress / my love, turn away before i am overcome with callousness / a thousand years past my blood will condemn the heavens

my frail beloved will brace himself like a man of strength / i will question him, & he will answer me, with his own lips / whose strength matches my arms, my beloved?

who knows when my beloved’s laughter is truthless? / who notices when he lies fallen? / who discerns when depression becomes his death?

whose grief is greater, the man that is wounded? / is not the anguish deeper for the one that embraces him? / i mingle my drink with my beloved’s tears, & i sip