Mother, Mary, child of god. I am grateful to Lilith and only her. Succubus’ colloquial kiss.
The relief that you wore a helmet, I don’t have to kiss blood blonde hair off tarmac, slip my bracelet onto the wrong wrists, or feel the spill of the stone pit on my cupid's bow. I am placid, watching bike cogs turn as you hand me blame, a rosette pinned directly to my chest, heart, and ribs, just the thigh please. Don’t butcher her.
The glorious ambiguity held in the tongue of platonic affection has been weeded out. Cleaned of pretence. Extracted with arm’s length utensils, replaced, and repaired by a borrowed sense of guilt and a toothy kiss.
I wet my cheeks as you accuse my body of so many things unconsidered, tracing my iris and tonsils back to a foreign garden plot. Then to him, and her, and them. As you spill over, I taste apologies salivating my mouth like a cunt.
So,
I eat hers daily, the lucid sounds of thighs, coastal warnings, and a lighthouse keeper’s noose.
I need you to know I cut myself loose again today.
By this, I mean, I wrote you a letter and then didn’t send it. By that I mean, the gardening centre shut down shortly after, then the post office, they’ll cull the sea next - I have no way of undoing your bidding.
I need you to know I am prepared to forget.
By this, I mean, I will christen myself in a vase of amnesia – me being in this room without you bares no reason, tripling always was obsessive. But still I arch and haunt.
Still we cave and billow into patterned coats and dresses, promised and hung on the rear view mirror. Still is the frame of us, breasts out, carcass feet, heads lolling backwards, four dead daffodils.
Still is the paper containing a single reminder of your reflection, a white feather (Personal pronoun) stuck to my breath. Still, we burn the collection, consult the oracle, both recoil winded and spluttering, doe legged.
Still I pretend not to recognise the goat, strangling you, hooves down, chest heaving. Still, blood vial twins lay dead in the doorway. Still, we sit as we look strikingly like them.
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