grave letters ✓

13

"are you for real?" your rose-red rouge plant seeds in my baby blue bruises and sing to them cruel melodies, candied lies, spit venom into the seams of the crook of my neck- you can call it a soft shower of mid-june rain, but never had the waterworks of a wounded sky done wonders to a woman at death's door.

"i'll paint you in lavenders" but alas, darling! your deodorizing game is slipping from underneath your feet, call it lavenders, run your eyes over the withering petals like they're pretty as a picture and purple like lilacs. you tell me i got liquor in my veins and i tell you it's the oleanders upon my lips. then you say "maybe it's the poison" but the confessed consonants go unheard into the melancholia of this night that was yet to respire and across the broken streets of this blue neighborhood that never really slept.

you claim you got badlands on repeat yet you build ladders and climb into the hurricane and i'm left to wonder if you're a prisoner on the run or a stray yearning for captivation. so we kiss and now you're caught up in the violence of this rain with no way back to the home you painted behind the bricks of bed stuy, and i tell you i'm in no hurry. should have listened to the seventeenth time i wailed at the top of my lungs, clinging on to the crevices of my milk ribs- "i'm the zephyr at the end of the road turning foolish men into tricks and drowning sailors with my weeps".

said my pussy was god and you were low on faith- yet you run from the rain like you weren't built from the ashes of the stars and blessed from the valleys of mother earth. you write letters inside of me with the pruned tips of your fingers and i swore to you your novels could be passed as best-sellers, yet you were too busy laughing and walking hand-in-hand with the devil, telling her you hit the jackpot and left before the sun could strip you bare.

feasting on middle children and second daughters for dinner and leaving the crumbs on the front porch of your dead-beat mama's home for the birds to feed on at dawn- now every time you sit in a booth with faulty confessions stitched to your gums and heart on the seams of your sleeves- you'll be reminded of how much i look like your god.