x.
apodyopsis.
the first time you did that to me
we were
unripe lovers who knew everything about love
but nothing of how to feel it
two bodies sucked into a black hole
that cracked open nicotine shadows
in the far pristine wall of the most forbidden of sections
it was the death of night. it was the birth of dawn.
it was the end of sunsets. it was the start of quietus.
your hamartia becoming my latria
pearl oyster skin around ivory-colored teeth
the taste of each other trapped between bloodless lips
(are the flames of hell warmer
than the cold between our chests?
or even colder?)
iridaceae flowers blooming in erubescent cheeks
fingers scraping down the spine of a battered book
let me tell you a story, you said,
the tragedy of a summer-scented girl born on the winter change
and dead by the time autumn finally came
the tragedy of a boy born with teeth in his heart
and claws in his hands to gnaw at the stars
(tell me, did God make the sky so you could tear it apart?)
apodyopsis.
you said it was your favorite word
you said the universe was born under my fingertips
and that the black hole between us could give birth to a star
or maybe you didn't say it, maybe it was just
how your hands on my neck made me feel
paraffin eyes lightning red candles in mine
droplets of melted kerosene setting arctic skins on fire
spring arriving earlier to spines made of wood and saffron
you brought war to my door with
bites of sanguinary teeth on gullible lips
you planted vermilion roses on my tongue and left me to bleed
roots of steel and bone growing down to my lungs
so I could not breathe
as you drank down the words of a book
you weren't supposed to be reading
as you drank down the life of a person
who wasn't supposed to be living
(will my heart still pump in your hands
after you rip it from me?)
apodyopsis.
the act of mentally undressing someone.
that's what you did to me, tom,
in that secluded corner of the forbidden section.
in that camera obscura you keep my heart in,
your eyes didn't just undress my body
until I was as naked to you as David to Michelangelo,
as human to you as heaven to the angels,
but everything in it,
every strained blood vessel and every exploding cell
until they were no longer mine but yours
carried from me to you in Hermes' caduceus
the only version of the staff where the intertwined snakes
aren't hissing, but kissing
you undressed me whole and not satisfied with my body
you sneaked into my brain, lured
in the dustiest alcoves of it
places I had never been before but to which I followed you
until my mind was no longer my cradle but your castle
the soft pulse on my neck no longer my crib but your crypt
and every hollow in my body not a sanctum
but a thousand dungeons
my skin bears your marks but it's my soul who's weeping
omnipresent bruises placed over shedded scars
slender nacre fingers soaring over a skein heart
so what did the boy do, I asked,
he (you) yanked it out
so forcefully all the blood came out at once
so forcefully the last beats happened at his (your) hands
glinting shards of shattered ribs
turned glass at their (our) feet
(what did you want my heart for, tom?)
to put it in yours in hopes you'd fill
the blank space you were born with
that blackened chasm in your chest
you've never been able to fill
but it doesn't fit and it never will
no heart ever will
not even your own
still, you shove my heart inside your ribcage
(will you shrink it?, I beg,
until it's no bigger than a pomegranate seed?)
apodyopsis.
with crystalline hands whose skin is flesh and blood from others
you grasp my soul and twist it so beautifully
it can never be put back into the same shape
do this until it is but a nude carcass of what it used to be
a gelid diamond reverting to stone
(when will it stop? when does she die?)
apodyopsis.
you did all of that purely with your eyes, tom
and I want you
to kill the distance between us
and do all of that with your hands this time.
(but you won't–
for you mock the cowards because you're their king)
I promise you can bleed too –
I promise I can make colored stained glass out of your ribcage
I promise I can taint my teeth with the ripest of cherries
I promise I can seize your pulse in my hands
and crush it until it finally grows talons and begs me to bury it
(tom, who are you if not my warped pieces?)
apodyopsis.
the last time you did that to me
we were
loveless strangers
two different shadows twirling in the half-light
wax dripping from cold candle-like fingers
and red-stained teeth wiped by tongues of rouged murder
(why touch me so softly? why kiss me so roughly?)
snatch my teeth away, I'll bite you with my tongue
stain your hands with my blood so it can grow fangs
and draw a map of burrowed trenches on your skin
so when thorns thrive on it you will remember your sin
(because the girl has to die and the boy must be the one killing her)
apodyopsis.
remember when I asked you what it meant
and you said
it's what I'm doing to you now
well, tom, I'm doing it to you now
but guess what you can't learn
in the forbidden books of the restricted section
there isn't much to undress
in a rotten corpse
though there is much to see
in a sky of unborn stars and clouds tainted with blood loss
(and the girl died.
and the boy existed miserably ever after
and every winter he'd put summer-scented flowers on her grave
wilted irises that bloomed even when spring never came)
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