The hands grow long
And it can never be simple
The touch from yesterday
Turning into the one from today
The scent attached to the skin
Besieging everything beneath the surface
Of you, of us, the names we carry,
The names that we wear like crowns
That try to hold onto us
Maybe captivate us, suffering co-dependently,
This is what we’re like,
What we’ll always be and succumb to,
Ourselves, the voices we’ve been given,
The thoughts we were thinking,
The destruction we cultivated
Of everything within us turned outward,
Turned inward once more,
Fumes of illegitimate poison,
Spreading its burning wings,
Onto the skies of night and dust and shells within clouds,
The alphabet of our bodies,
Steps tracing themselves back,
The taste of your lips
On the hard bed of our necks
Pecking, regurgitating, whispering
Thunder and tumultuous lies and cobwebs
Entailing you and your echoes
Spinning themselves into the fabric of our hair,
Our minds and hands, puppets hanging on by a thread,
A smile on your face, a smile so sad
And disastrous, it burns and disintegrates once it appears,
It needs fuel, it asks and begs and kills for fuel,
Maintain me, hold me up, my lips,
My mouth, hold my heart and don’t you dare break it,
Hold it, let it beat, be the heartbeat, if you let it fall
I’ll kill you, I kill, I know death too well, its breath
Torments my spine, cradles my body, hands around my throat,
Am I am killer of selves, my own, is killing the right word,
Is that me, who am I within your body,
I died a long time ago and here I am, still talking to you,
Telling you what you should do, listen over here,
Follow my voice within you, am I right, why do you keep listening,
To me, I have lost my body, your voice barely knows
Its own sound, how to speak up, how to respond to me
And my vicious instructions or am I benevolent,
I don’t know anymore, it’s been such a long time,
I can’t decipher my own impulses and actions anymore.
Croque-Melpomene 