she told me that it’s like this,
“your knees are broken
from the heights you have fallen,
and your addiction to attention
cannot be cured with cards or condolences.
these holes in your lungs
plugged with smoke and tongues
are terminal, dear,
an accidental suicide note
carved in your corpse.
•
“and your spine melts like glue,
the heat of the expectation
fusing your shins into part of the floor you kneel upon,
and you beg me for benzos with belief on your breath
that you belong to boys;
to their sunken, rounded eyes
that fondle your flesh with distanced disdain,
with inconsiderate drool swinging from their lips that hang off their dogged faces,
that they hope to ensnare you with $7.99 nectar
and a hooked arm, leaned away,
claws in the small of your back,
possession.
•
“that is all you’ve ever known.
so you come to me,
throat-deep in the rot,
for cosmic absolution and romantic resolution,
so that the victim you have become can stay the victim that you are?
it must be tiring reliving the same man through different faces and hands,
and receding away when you recognize the unfamiliar.”
•
I laugh in the chair in the room in the clinic,
ask her to refill the prescription,
close the door behind me,
and love another who tastes
just like him.
•
??/??/2022
Tofu 