Wash the sins out of my ribcage with downpour,
the monsoon cannot swell fast enough to abate
the growing disgust that churns in my stomach.
Like bile coating the back of my throat,
my words patina into a murky rust -
indistinguishable from blood.
I worry you’ll peer into my mouth and see
a second kind of shadow, you would flinch
and wonder if there is any part of me that
doesn’t consume endlessly. You’ll realize
how empty I am, and incapable of giving,
and you’ll stay anyways, like an interacting
binary star. I will have swallowed you whole,
and have offered you nothing.
I saw you smile the other day,
the sun pleasantly leaked from the back of
your mouth, and stained your words with
light, you are a mountain of honey quaking
to erupt.
There’s something archaic in the way you
perpetually spill light – like the first humans
gazing at the midnight sun, joyous of never
having to fear the dark of summer, and when
December nips at their fingertips, they rejoice
at the sight of polar nights that tint the skies
an ethereal twilight blue.
In all hours, you’ll find me cradling a dying
past iteration of me; I am bound to the past,
why do you think I still hold you in high regard?
You’ve changed, you are no longer the person
I’ve once idealized, you simply are.
And when the clouds depart,
I’ll be left standing, having laid a fraction of
my multitude to rest, contending to do with
words what I cannot with paint –
remind myself that the lambent skies
are not mirrors.
