return to sift through the ashes

I beg for you a better gift, a tongue to bridge the bitter rift, a plea and prayer to heal your wounds when there was nothing I could do for you. I'm not near good enough at pretending to act like I don't know the oldest story in the book or its condescending ending. My passion always betrays my attempts at control, eventually. But with you-- naked and bathed in sunlight, wistful and blissful and youthfully unfulfilled, ambitious and gaping orifices and plans to rule the world-- there was nothing but honesty in my fingertips and every moment that our spasming lungs spent spilling battle cries together, cursing history together, celebrating the fact that nothing lasts forever together-- each of those moments taught me a language to write my love with. When I get the last shreds of skin off my bones I will finally be free. I'm the wind-up limbs on a suicide machine, I'm a sandpaper bird in a nest made of matches soaked in gasoline. I'm broken glass near a playground slide, I'm a truthful accusation that's repeatedly denied. I'm a muffled cry from the neighbor's door, a jagged slag of grey slate rock on a mountain near the shore. I have agonizing edges that refuse to be ignored, and the only way to make them smooth is to make them feel adored.