had i been there,
i would have taken it all i
would have drowned
opened my lungs & taken it all back
i have nothing to say but before
you go know this: once
your hands were the only place for me, there
i lay between your thighs & cried i
dripped salt-blue into your eyes, know
that this is how
you cure a lover of pain, go to
the river & throw them in never mind if they swim
never mind if they can't help but
die, & i couldn't
help but blame you & there
you were nothing more than a place for men
to leave their lungs & you stood
held out your hands, your hands my bi-
nary gods
you looked like you wanted to dance and shore
baby if you want & grab a boy spin him around &
i watched
as you made ruin out of hipbones, me
& my sick sad spill of blue
rot, the space between my ribs & there-
fore i have given you nothing but i
have loved more than you i was
everything in a tragic spell & you gave me nothing if i was dead
i would have prayed more instead of sunday spent fish-
ing with uncle, the river
spitting back prince-
s dead fish, that's what i
was, rotten & good for nothing but i had
a spine baby, a backbone & a
pair of knees to kiss the pavement, how i face-
d everything i'd ever known & renounced it.
how you make your mother cry &
how your brother spits in the spaces then
quiet & then didn't.

RIGHT so i'm doing a writing course rn and it's whopping my butt shoutout to vangohs because i shamelessly plagiarised the "this is how you cure a lover of pain line" and i'm sorry anyway yeah this is a golden shovel poem of part of danez smith's poem summer somewhere
(last word from every line spells:
there i drowned back before / once there i know how to swim but couldn't / there men stood by shore & watched me blue / there i was dead fish, the river prince / there i had a face & then didn't)