Sunday, December 25, 2016

A Litany of Confessions

Is there a word for the moment when you win an argument?
when the punches have landed when you weren't even looking and how even though you've won you feel the air gushing out of you in defeat?
it's the same word for the moment when your ex lover chokes out that he's getting married with a tongue that has just ploughed you into supplication.

my friend is falling in love and it's glorious to watch.
she's knitting his name into anything that moves, into any story that dares to draw breath
his existence is always being spilled into conversations and she's kneading love into his body between endless cocktails and tears and burning and she's feeling the most she has ever felt in her life and even though they are tap dancing across continents and around people, he is still her favourite place to exist. he is discovering the grenades between her skin and picking them off one after the other because in this love story the princess rescues herself and the prince is just along for the ride.

I am not in love with you but everything is all light and weightless.
You tell me stories that make me throw my head back and gulp the breaths of others around me
everything is garlic and ginger and cinnamon
i am not in love with you but you walk in like you belong here and
in the absence of speech our bodies make summer when you pour me on your backseat.
I will never call you home but the seams of my body are coming unraveled in your hands and i don't know how to put this much shame into poetry.
do you know what the world sounds like after everyone leaves?
after you have picked your teeth and tucked your conscience back into view
after you have peeled me out of my skin and spilled me on the floor in penance
i lay there and whimper out a prayer,
i say:
Forgive me Lord, but i am so lonely and sad and just looking for a body to disappear into.