slit me open. down along the seams. that’s what they’re there for. so you can ride your tiger through me. the tears streaming down your face. the fragment of memory caught in my throat. am i choking? its an easy way out of this situation. this apartment we shared. its next to nothing now. all our things arrayed out in front of us. like an auction. or some sort of garage sale of the heart. but i give up all my gear. move out and move on with nothing. i always like to move that way. you were always the one for holding on. i mean, i held on. but come on. the misery. the wasting. the lost time spent pissed off. the boxes broken while you carried them downstairs. the items which constitute your life packed inside the back of a truck. i couldn’t care less. you used me and changed me. i’m a river. i’m a boat. the ship across the atlantic. the first voyage to a new land. the highbeams are on in the fog. i’m careening ahead.

i remember the first time i held you. all wet with wisdom. the fishing lures forgotten. the lines long since lost and tangled. the dirt and all the worms spilled. i could have run. i could have dropped you. back into the water. back into the well. lowered us both down in a bucket. they say this used to be a holy place. they say this is where the pagans came to pray. the salmon of knowledge. split open for the eggs inside. the many times we spent together curled on the couch. the visible distance between your eyes and what they perceived. i always saw you slipping. it took me too long to react. and that’s fine now. our kinship is long since dead and buried. you certainly saw to that. with your magnificent funeral pyre. sweet and pure. naked as the day you were born. the general attitude towards failure. the toast of our last day together in death.

maybe we came once before. together. out of some forgotten past. but i don’t think so. the only voice i ever heard in my head, told me it wouldn’t last. funny how voices go. the singing. the laughing. the quiet teasing in the middle of the night. the way you fell asleep and began speaking in tongues. other languages, dark and mysterious. to which you had no knowledge in the daylight. i would fall asleep as far away from you as possible. curled up on the other side of the bed. shivering and intensely alone. panicked. the windows down into the street. the birds chirping in the night. i could be one of them. kept and caged here with you. one of your animals. maybe i’m a caribou. maybe i’m moss, on a rock. from the swamp where you were spawned. go back there now.

the immediate threat of danger. the way you reacted by hiding. the way i reacted by hiding you. here, get behind my cloak. let me spread out my wings. be at rest. stay hidden. i can protect and save you. i can be the envelope to mail us both across the world. let’s climb inside. the post office. the labor shortage. the fingers of business pressing hot upon us. i’m in love with your image. i’m in labour, giving birth to your becoming. use me for what you will. for i have no will of my own. no discernible goals or desires. use me to build your fire. use me to explain your desires to the whole world. i am an appendage. and i am dangling from between your legs.

can you be my substitute? for when i lay dying? i ask you not so much as a favor for me. but for everone else. who will genuinely and truly miss me. not like you will. with your big hats and wavy hair all swirling in the meadows. the wheat fields. the time spent laughing. the way you braided your hair. the sometimes bun you held it in. the undoing and the hair sent playing about your shoulders. the sunlight off tree blossoms, which we picked and planted all across your body. naked in the shade. it’s been so long since we laid there. together in union. disunion. reunion. confusion. the static electric charge of search lights. the spindly arms of bacterial death. the bitches and wishes we lost there. if i could freeze forever.

bite off my limbs. sever me from forever. i could become a roller. a little wheel to measure out time, and your way back to these places in our life together. which are easier to forget. i am a criminal only because of my becoming. i am a stranger, only to please my maker. the master of living. the fever of our hey-day. the magic scrolls which we unfurled in the moonlight. the chanting which took place there. never sinister. never unusual. but fragrant. and chocolate. like pear-shapes in summer. the back end of a machete. the ice pick of our denouement. bring me an apple. bring me a blade. i have come back for you and i mean to take your head.