I would like to think they broke my legs so I’d learn how to walk and that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” but
we’ve been an angel
bleeding at a monster’s doorstep
with bruises on our arms
soil on our skin
from when the storms kicked around edenic ground
and we believed we were in paradise
bruised and beaten paradise
a poisoned paradise
with her hands around our neck—
but
we have been a monster too
screaming at an angel’s doorstep
ill ink, toxic type, and tired lies
as if her pain could heal ours.
we are so ashamed of who we were
and who we are but that doesn’t change a thing, we
are faulty we are human we are weak as human power tends to be
and in this human rotted shell, this human piece of shit
we’ve learned “i’m sorry” rakes some people’s wrists across the coals
because nobody can fix it.
we know we have caused bleeding too.
you are a paper-storm. a hurricane of handwritten love letters with lipstick seals and expensive fragrances. you have packaged and bottled and enveloped pieces of your broken body and your broken mind and mailed them to every bidder who would hold you in their arms. sometimes the price was low and sometimes high, but never right. never right at all, and this is how you learned your words and promises don’t mean a goddamn thing.
doe-eyed
and silver-tongued, hung high with just as hot clichés and unsung pseudo heroism —
truth throttles us like a goddamn pike and we’ll take turns choking out our flaws in attempt to relieve the splinters in our skin. their splinters in my skin.
***
do not believe her when she tells you that she loves you —
tango twists in waves in open graves
her body lies so cold in pieces
to barricade in scattered walls the sea who entertains a summer after fall
but holy hells aside the waves are getting higher and inside they will unravel bruises on the driveway gravel with bruising on the inside of her thighs
she’ll beg you why she’ll beg you why and beg you to just wrap yourself around her and keep her close and warm but in the end she’ll say she loves you
to have shelter for the storm
teach me how to be (so beautiful) the way the autumns are in dying
do you see october in me collapsing breathlessly so out of breath
so loudly with my brilliant reds when i’ve always dreamt of flying,
tell me
do you see october in me and the leaves inside my eyes
love me said the sparrow
and i will teach you how to fly
sparrow holds it fast, holds it tight — compendium of broken things and small dead birds with singed and open wings in the absences of light — she cries in cornered gasps but in her grasp the box is tightly sealed though her skin burns from decay.
(dead)weight in her poisoned hands she won’t let go she won’t let go
but sparrow has to understand, she must she must
it hurts much more this way
somnolent snares of sweeping vines
whose veins creep quietly on tiptoes
sleepy stares from windows
resting on their windowsills
a world so majestic so still and so divine—
you cry beyond the valley
you bleed stories from the hills
but in the thickness of the air
your passion travels nowhere
choked in leaves like chewing glass
how crass it is to say i love you
but most obscene with distances
are the words i love you too
