The Act of Falling
All her life men have taught her
Love is only real if it makes you bleed
So I drop pieces of myself
Into her, stone after stone
Drowning myself to try and fill her up
While she is flooded by the red waves of her past.
No story is complete truth
And old lovers have written
Her into oceans.
She is their mystery.
Their foreign land.
They fall to their knees
Whispering prayers
Like bullets in their teeth
And before she can stop herself
She screams back.
No tenderness like this can last
And neither can I, so I maul her
Into memory.
Our fears are metaphors
For each other’s kind of love.
Fingers curled to triggers
I wrap myself like Kevlar around her,
But my heart is the wrong heart.
Mouth the cooling barrel of a gun
And everything I want to say
To her is dangerous.
I held that night in my palms
And gutted it
With the smallest knife I could find
So she wouldn’t do it to herself.
cupboard under the stairs 