hanahaki

 

You made me like yellow, you bastard.

And I spit up great handfuls of yellow flowers;

I spat out your ideals like they were something I thought of by chance;

How strange to be writing you a book now.

There’s a strange intimacy in the longing for a grave;

In the fear of it,

In the knowledge gained in knowing Death and finding him gorgeous,

In loving someone with split knuckles and harsh words,

And I’ve given up amputating the feeling

 

I love you because you hate me and I hate me too

Or I’m as insignificant to you as I am to myself

Loving you is hell and a holy game

And where does it come from,

All this silence?

 

Death is in the hands of the believer, and I believe in you

I have since I saw you

Standing on my rooftop at age fourteen

And I write an eulogy for someone who never died but rather

Lifted off the roof and out of my life

And you are thorns and I swallow you whole, I eat you alive

“Diamond sharpens diamond,”

I think you keep me alive

 

And digging my hands into that sick, sick old wound I let it fester and

Seize up, vomit what little I kept down,

Hold my pain like a colicky baby

And step aside and wait for the shoe to fall and the other one to fit,

Watch the man water his roses

And I swallow the thorns whole

(and enjoy it, the sicko)

 

And you eat roses

On the other side of the garden

Through the glass, and I can see

them in your teeth,

Mangled up and crumpled and yellow

and when I vomit, it’s razors, but the petals are what cut mem

 

And your hands around my throat with your tattoos and

If we’re meant to better each other

I think someone should have told you

Because these flowers taste like shit.

And I don’t think these thorns

Were meant to be eaten.