I wrote this about a year ago at the beginning of my sobriety and the end of my relationship during the covid lockdown, just before I quit smoking, all while my city burned with the BLM riots.

I.

The Walmarts all are empty, shelves gaping toothless

Breathless, and there are no gatherings

And when there are

You better hope they’re worth it.

People don’t shake hands anymore,

except with those they’d happily go down with

Same ship, same crew

And we kiss each other too,

And share cigarettes, as we pass them our eyes lock

In a silent pact, a prayer,

A bow to the plague

And to each other

And to the fragility of

Things.

Somehow, Spring still comes.

The lake is molting,

Coughing chunks of herself upon the banks

Huge plates of ice collapsed on each other like

Damsels in heat

And it is beautiful.

I only hope she is purging the poison

And not dying of it.

II.

The chaos has set in,

It reels like rabid pinwheel behind your eyes

And you dance along, embrace it like a cool drink

Even as it scorches every cavity of your face, your chest,

Your mind,

You are prone to

Disintegration.

My body wants to make art out of you,

Wants to push you through my pores with heavy breathing

To taste your hunger and claw at one another

To make a way back in, back home

To nothingness

Even if this means

Blood.

I want to be a leaden blanket

silencing your reckless thoughts

That rattle and hiss and

chew at the inside of your skull

And the meats of your eyes.

Instead I stand in your doorway,

My arms full of my own clothes

hanging limply like poached game around my thighs,

And ask you if you truly

have nothing

To say.

An overworked executioner scrounging

For last words before the plug

Is pulled,

Anything to remind her

Why she even got into this line of work.

“I’m sorry” you decide

So I drop my spoils and collapse

One last time, gather you fiercely

Like you are poems

Stolen by the wind

And strewn about the street.

I linger twice, once for each of us,

Your head upon my knee

And then

Let go

For I think much too highly of you

To be party to this

Degradation, this slap in the face

Of your beloved self;

I have seen you fight too hard

To betray the one

Who loves you

Best, he’s

Reading this now and

He knows you

Mean well,

He was never angry

That this is so hard.

This is so hard.

III.

Outside I guess the world is also ending

Well worn haunts become strange territory

Suddenly, I am a child again

Building fairy houses on a battlefield,

I am not ready.

I wish someone would call me in for dinner

Scrub the dirt from behind my ears,

Hold my heart for a moment so that I might

Collapse, dissolve

I am prone to

Disintegration.

Instead I am stronger

Than I ever wanted to have to be;

I raise myself.

So I sit here with my skin peeling off,

My hair falling out on the table

Wrestling with wildness.

You are a great beast

Not to be neutered down to civility,

I relish it in you.

It was never my intention

To suppress your appetite,

Do not hoard

Your teeth deeper within you.

There must be a practice of some sort

Where you, in all your carnal glory

Can catch the scent of blood

And need neither pounce nor cower-

I can not bear the thought of you suspended

In the fear of your own impulses.

Breathe into your own power

But do not learn the song of your claws

Against another throat,

Especially your own, sweet savage

Which somehow tears my skin as well

Even across this city

Of caged, assimilated bears

Who can’t tell where the circus ends

And they begin.