i leave you tattered and reckless, your life in shambles, dirt under your nails. i pray for you. she says, i prey for you and digs her fingers up behind my jaw and tugs me near. i prey for you.

everything i breathe comes from this line of sight through the cracks of doors and slits of throats. she puts a sticker underneath his tongue. he pulls on his foot, draws his sock into his mouth. she rubs her breasts to loosen their grip from her muscle. i smoke fiendishly and point and click. he prepares a room for his unborn child. she has stopped complaining about the pain in her lower back. she takes pills because her heart is racing while sitting in the rain. days and days go by where i don’t shower: the clothes peel off of me. she takes a jump rope and whips it endlessly. he reaches for her hand to pull himself free of the floor. she waits for him while he calls another woman. she contemplates retirement because her daughter is moving away. her son lays listlessly with a joint in his hand. he leaves his father’s grave with tracks in the mud. and i understand none of it.

they scatter, rain whip, wind whip, tail whip. we all leave in tears. hear this. no she said, here. this. i scatter my hands, dig my toes into the dirt. it figures prominently, along with trees limbs and curbs, perched outside a window a lifetime watching cars shoot onto highways. hardest adjustment, the silence. always coy with the night, large and vacant and promising. she says, hear this but i cannot listen anymore. instead, here. this. she scatters her fingers, tugs at her skirt. they all leave in shambles.

talk in the dark of brighter days. time chewed up and we’re left with crumbs. she asks, will we ever get there? kissing her i reply, we never left

uprooted, the teeth grow spiny vines like caterpillars that bristle to the touch. feathered wings of chapped lips speak of summer days along cliffs and promises. she felt pretty and i felt nothing.

we broke vowels the way lions snapped the necks of zebras. and we threaded through crowds of angry drinkers looking to get high like no one else. but we were exhausted and hopeful and something deep inbetween, stuck between this way and that, between a kiss and a lie. I prayed for many things, the least of which you would hold my drink as I fell.

a dilemma. not happening
now
it’s not
happening over again
but still happening
all over now, a radiation of the senses
a phantom limb all over
scarred mess of tissue
if only i could cleave it, separate it from the wound
of it happening
asking me not to dwell on it is asking
to tie my hands and swallow it
whole and unblemished
over not happening now
but it happened, still happening
and i can’t get over who i’ve become
better, stronger, wiser
still healing, a happening now
not happening over again, sure
the worst of it
being i’m glad it happened, it woke us
up out of something tired and wasted
but had i known, always
had i known, i never would have
taken her, given her this pain
to forgive