Carve upon my bones
Your esoteric alphabet
The sharp edges of your tongue
Your instrument of inscription.
Your words are ancient but indelible
Etched upon lichen bones you used
To divine our omens. When my blood
Was not enough, you left these ruins
For another city to conquer.
Your runes are carved on my ruins
If I run my fingers against them
I can almost remember:
Your ruins felt like magic
Like resurrection
Like love.
I am afraid what my blood test will reveal.
Genetic foibles; mutated infractions of my ancestors
We spent so many generations hiding these secrets
Our artery walls have become rigid from compressing scarlet.
If you spill this scarlet, run tests through it
You will not only find the corrosion of your void
But a gestalt of all the loves we had to forget.
Do all my red blood cells resemble empty bowls
To transport life through plexus and peripheries
Or is your absence writing itself in my veins?
For some nights you possess my platelets
So I cannot help but Bleed to your vacuum
Like a switchless fountain, never ceasing.
All my organs have bled for you. Your memories
Pool and congeal as tumours over my anatomy
In my kidneys, brain, stomach, arteries
I fear if you move too close to my heart
You may arrest the only muscle I reserved for myself
So pierce my skin like a first heartbreak. Test me.
If you need a saviour
Look beyond these mesh of veins
For an inkling of love beyond your shame
Count my freckles as rosary beads
To chant away every shade of scarlet in your sins
Drink up my breath — Drink up
As if new life is wrought by the carbon I exhale.
‘You give me a new lease on love’, you say
‘To right my wrongs to your previous incarnations’
But know this
As Ishtar treated her lovers with cruelty
So too will I break your wings when you spread them to fly
And dig you seven pits, and seven more.
The blood in my veins are only blood
They cannot save you from your underworld
Even if I descend therein with you.
The Brooding Narcissist 