she twists and turns in her sleep, sheets tie limbs down into something that passes as rest. tears for pillows, the slumber of a man beside her who breaks her constantly. children who wake in the night vomiting into his arms and the tired limbs of a mother bent over double to change the sheets. i’ve poured everything into this or i’ve poured nothing, but i am mourning for it, of it, of him and her and what they used to be. and i dream of nooses, i dream of hanging, i dream of an unmarked grave.

death like anything, warmed over. i clasp bitten nails around shoulders torn, a lover’s misstep, a wife’s bounty, and jackals that lurk between trees. there is not one promise i will not break into and ransack as my own. eyelashes that peel off before sunrise and we mock the necks of bottles broken inside the necks of lonely men. so quick, easy and disposable: this is what we’ve come to, this is what passes.

death like anything, warmed over. i clasp bitten nails around shoulders torn, a lover’s misstep, a wife’s bounty, and jackals that lurk between trees. there is not one promise i will not break into and ransack as my own. eyelashes that peel off before sunrise and we mock the necks of bottles broken inside the necks of lonely men. so quick, easy and disposable: this is what we’ve come to, this is what passes.

here, here and the jeers, she fingers along the the gap where his tooth has fallen out, still bloody. do you like the taste of it and i wasn’t quite sure if i was asking the question or being asked of it. but she smiled and laughed and wept suddenly into the bowel of this atrocious feeling of being broken and slivered and sliced and somewhat happy in all of it. there there, she said and picked up what looked like a piece of a tooth and it might have been mine or her last lover’s but she fit it into my mouth all the same, we were all the same, she was all the same all over, despite the night, despite the glare of the sun, despite the entire entourage walking on thin ice.