you only want to hold my hand, right?
i'm talking into your mouth
as we crush underfoot
a half of a third of a moon-shaped pie,
enough of it killed on the pavement
to paint the roses red.
and to say no would be a lie,
and to say yes would be a lie,
and while i'm weighing stones
you've already taken your bow
to my string instrument of a throat
and cut me an agreeable tune.
your stone fruit heart in my hands,
isoamyl acetate aftertaste
in our language of precision.
my mother tells me in the car ride home
that the way you look at me
is different, is more. i am forever
strapped to the back-seat feeling sick.
love, love, love and other made-up
words locked in our pinkie fingers,
you make me walk on the inside
of the footpath and
press a knife-point against my ribcage
in the same short breath.
you make me wish
i was some other kind of creature,
but instead we're two halves
of the same dirty whole.
we run away from the all-else,
tuck our two bodies into a timeless space.
our legs stretch out along
muddied slate laminate,
our backs press up against
the devilish mundanity of locker walls.
something's happened
to your grandmother and i
am the first clean page
in the whole wide world
you're spilling your ink over.
the honour and the absurdity, the
endless rabbit hole, the likeness.
you're too quick and i'm too good
at keeping up. or perhaps
i'm too quick and you're too good
at hunting.
your eyes on my eyes makes
for a magnolia and dogwood candle
burned at both ends.
as always, you ask without words,
and to say yes would be a lie,
and to say no would be a lie,
but my god would you let me be honest?
with us it's always
touché, non sequitur, petitio principii,
and just when i'm maybe-there,
your impatience delivers a
coup de grâce. now look at us,
now look at what you've done.
don't you know that what hurts me
will hurt you too?
oh, i wish we weren't so alike.
that might make it easier—
what i'm about to do next.