Blues and grays,
cascades
of black flowers:
forget me not’s and
forget me so’s
so she’ll never have to let me go.
Falling was not hard, not so much as the
scarring that never scarred,
save for the imprints on her thighs.
She said goodbye as her
cat’s eyes did cradles,
and spun hearts into dark
and when they narrowed
and all was stripped,
she fell and tripped into oblivion
and fell apart.

I let her dive into me.

Through my lips,
through my eyes,
white lies,
black lies.
The 337th disguise,
I let her shed in me.
I now have the cindering
snake skin, so thin
and burnt as she begins
and when she sings you want to give in.
But who, I wonder, is next to give in?
She’ll let you fall again;
she’ll invite you to fall again.
And in the morning light, so surely as the dew
coming to drown the earth will dry,
she’ll win.
So pay her for the sin. In old age
you will envy the guilty;
so be guilty
of lust,
of greed,
of hate,
of deceit.
Writhe inside your veins
and dance again.

She said, “Give me God’s lovers,”
and as you pushed into her,
you discovered
(as I discovered)
angels sang
and you gave in.
In my defense,
the malevolence
was pleasurable in the holiest sense
and since then, I have believed.
So now I see.
She told me not to stop until I felt the pain—
monotony birthing death to my name,
so we felt the fire together

…and I’ll never be the same.

As I lost my skin,
I gave in
to cat eyes and snake skin.
And in the burning between us,
I wondered
if this was heaven.