how about this? he said and he cut open the inside of his forearm and teased out the tendons with the edge of the knife. when he was done with that, he placed the knife down and pulled the skin open a little more, the edges tearing a bit, there’s so much blood, and he works his fingers inbetween the muscles that drape over the bones. it’s warm and clammy and familiar. of course when he flinches the muscles twitch, and he coughs a bit to keep from vomiting. when he can finally see the space just between the ulna and the radius, he takes the cigarette from his mouth and puts it out in there, inside his arm, the cigarette gasping, him wincing, him laughing, him weeping, because it doesn’t even come close to what’s already inside his head.

and in my dream she comes to me, naked and pristine, one side of her ribs cracked open, a shattered window, a gaping hole where her heart would have been and she smiles brilliantly like happiness and i break into a million pieces because i am holding her heart in my own hand and the blood is thick and slick in my fingers and i have to grip it even harder lest it escape, restless, hot and wild, this magnificent muscle, and there she was bleeding out of her heart and out of the wound and i walk up to her and with my other hand, to try to to stem the flow and suddenly she touches my chin and brings my mouth to hers, her kiss, tongue and teeth and lip, and i falter, i ask,
“am i your weapon?”
and i fall to my knees with my head against the concrete and i slam against it but it isn’t hard enough, i cannot beat my skull in fast enough to match the beat of her heart, just this pathetic wet sound of skin having been broken but the bone too stubborn to break and she kneels beside me and caresses my hair and does not ask me to yield, i turn to her and shove her heart back into the wound, scraping it, damaging it yet again but i can not hold it anymore, i skin my knuckles with the effort, bite off the sides of my tongue, but shards of ribs trap my hand, slicing around my wrist as i twist and tug and find myself relieved to see i am spilling open into her, i can see the marrow, i see myself laughing and she touches my cheek and i am not afraid, i am so utterly lost and hopeless, and she whispers,
“no. i am yours.”

soft soft like lying, lying beside the ocean, the whisper of a sea too distant to feel the current and yet drowning, drowned, i can’t swim out of it, i can’t find where the sky should be, there is only night and her, the dream of her waking up, the sun rising, there is supposed to be some sort of bottom or else how do i find my way upwards, how to find air, when there is no undertow, just a pulling at all sides, the whip tails of something passing, eyes open but blurred for lack of place, i cannot see her, only feel the weight she carries, as if she had been the anchor to my dilemma and she cut me into pieces, cut me loose, adrift, drifting and swept up just before breathing, and cut and spun, again and again, again and again.

there is no story here, only whips and snaps of something that has leaked through, that has made an impression, that has been butchered beyond recognition. you cannot see what is here, a funhouse mirror at best, only the distortion of noise where the signal found is your own. i am my own and only, as ever have been, this lonely fucking place, where there is no sound other than the roar that defined me as a child and set me apart, the curious detachment that i have lived this all before, nothing ever comes as a surprise, even the happy moments, even in tragedy, nothing at all. just the sound of there having been something here at one time, the trace of a breath, the outline of a something better than this, all but gone except for this blood rush, this fucking maddening absence that spills over and over, shits on everything, breaks everything, shows me for what it is, how truly empty every moment, how devoid, how clean, unblemished, pure and eternal, this thing in me that has no home, that keeps me exposed to it all, that keeps me away from you. this is the true always and forever, my own and only, this lovely fucking solitude where i am most at peace in its silence, where only the noise for company and you will never be permitted to see.