put all my demons on display

i would drive on, to the end with you

late in the night, you think the past could be the bodily urge to gnaw away at your bottom lip to stop calling the reflection by another name. they all believed prayed it would disappear when you grew older.

blessed be the children with graveyards of unburiable pasts. / blessed be them with dirt scuffed knees after attempting to bind their futures to soil. / their bodies scrapbooks of pocketknife kisses. / fathers who’ve forgotten how to speak without hopeless destruction / mothers who’ve poisoned themselves with false perceptions.

you have no past to cradle or mother, only an insatiable narrative and a boy with a christlike gaze waiting to turn you into a miracle.

this love is nothing but cobwebs and flies hidden in the loose floorboards of this sodden church. in the pews, your body runs out of tearsalt; something else went missing in you on that day, but everything else began to burn his name. is he a blessing or a bruise?

oh sweet mourning lamb, you’ve always known you’re more trembling cruelty than child, more absence of memory than attainable future.

beneath your ribcage is a dim hum of violence, a festering sickness wailing each night for you to remember how this ends. breathing deep in quiet rooms, silent sermons falling from your lips in hopes those decade old prayers finally came true.

the boy with wide and watchful eyes confesses he’s close to unraveling your narrative, his body toeing the line between ashes and raging fire. you won’t have enough time to wash your hands of all this blood. it isn’t even yours; oh, when will it be yours? all you are is flesh and bone clinging on for a chance to let violence lose.

oh slaughtered little dove, who are you still holding onto?

feed us sleazy lies with blood underneath your fingernails. tell us: god came down without enough love. he’s gone back home (and in a way, he has).

coax your yearning into the hollow spaces of someone else’s body (is your yearning for acceptance held in the heart or the liver?). dull down those stinging teeth and wipe off the blood. hide away in a confessional and repeat that (dis)honest name until it rings true like a prayer or bullets.