titanica

cling to me, my desperate lover -

i am the last life raft in this sea of ours. i am paper and ink,

creased and trembling in the river running,

crumple the edges of me in your clumsy, youth-stained hands

while i bleed into this water. and i’m starting to think that

the heroes were mostly wrong. that the stories were only stories.

that the darkness is just darkness and the sword is just a sword,

whether you pull it out of a stone or a body. whether it's red paint

or blood. then again, maybe one is noble and the other cruel.

doesn’t matter to the dead man. doesn’t matter to the stone.

our reflections sit on the stones, tumble in the boiling water;

heat upon heat upon heat, like the tasting of stars, the ache,

the promise to learn the earth's tongue and never speak anything else.

the wind swallows our voices. the water swallows our faces. i’ll swallow

the sound of you, and the sight of you, and the sky. beat the world to it,

and all that. this world is a sticky gaping jaw, slick with summer precipitation,

feeding the flowers growing in your lungs. chain smoke these marigolds again,

give the sun something to look at. the sky is in a battle with itself, burning blue

against peach against crimson; be the diversion we need to win this night over.

they'll all be burnt to ashes. we'll be burnt down to teenage bones. who will haunt

the night sky tonight when this is all over? who will cling to the moon half a shadow?

we always wanted to be the stars. this'll have to do, won't it? quick, before we go,

let's bleed life itself. you always wanted to be the world,

but this'll have to do.