crumbling,

i have been awake for fifteen minutes.
your mouth in the crook of my neck feels

very much like sunlight, very much like i am
seeing things, schizophrenic and blue, hands shaking

like when i drive your car without looking at your body,
multicoloured and alive, listless in the front seat,

our music playing, breathing in the smell of leaves, of warmth.
your voice in my ear, you finding me in a crowd of people,

this is me remembering how lucky i am, how i am
more fortunate than i'd like to admit, knowing that

bleeding does not really hurt, exactly, because you cannot
comprehend the strength of the mind, a queen in feathers

and dark gowns, bird sitting in a bath of blood, surrounded
by fields of wire, broken teeth, smiling men who touch small windows

small windows closed by governments and purity and faith.
some days i was ripping out my vessels with nail scissors, i was

prescribed between swallows, the ebony crushing noises
of my throat making the same hacking choke

that comes throughthe sounds of paxil,
prozac, zanax, and after a while

all i could hear was the muffled blush of my monosyllabic
vocabulary, the yes after each question,

the rest drowned out in hn and hm,
my soft sounds of past midnight, please, mm.

now i am the three in the mornings spent sick, down the
little hall, twisted up in the cramped bathroom.

now i am the four in the mornings being ripped forcefully
out of my shell by the most gentle fingers, prying,

opening up the jeweled coffins that i rested my heart
in, undoing dusty latches with a soft ctcht.

moved, i stare with what i hope is impassivity
at the monarch above me, his hands wound around

a smoldering arrow that pins me to the ground, his hands
breaking my collarbone and fracturing several ribs,

his hair sticking to the sweat on my cheeks as he rests,
touching my wounds with strange caring, with uncaring, with,

something resembling love. something i lost in virginity,

something i lost in sex, something i lost in spitting blood in the shower,
something i lost in holding her hand even as she lied to me,

something i lost in his hands, too: the ability to care without
really needing, the ability to heal without removing the scars.