LILIUM LANCIFOLIUM

Tiger-eyed and lambent, pulled down by soaked clothes, 

incarnadine the sea with me, my love. Wash this wanting, wantonness from a hypocrite’s body. 

Clutching at wet skin with child-hands and everything is cruel—strike me down, spoon out the pith, I am no victim. Do you think the walls talk to us? I think the tiles do too, pulsing into my tailbone and grooved against bars of soap: there is no end, so it must be beautiful, something feathered and soft, tasting of breast milk and autumn’s hair. There’s roads paved with nylon strings / laundry detergent, suburban houses flickering weak silhouettes, where I am welcome but never willing. 8:46PM, too early in the eve for anguish, yet I only want what I’ve never had. I deserve to be euthanized, ugly and drooling, held by the nape of my neck over the tub like a babe, impervious to irony and absence, 

    a dead girl is better than a venal one. 

Know me naked, know me sensitive, salting the earth beneath my feet gently, lace-pressed, twist me rote and rotgut. Follow the ache until it curls in your chest and knows you by name: smooth, velveteen, doctrine. And I want to be good, you must believe me; I grow tiresome of tire and the shame of clammy palms, greater in my own home than any steeple, any arch of the angel’s foot. There must be more for you than this. Fold into me like night, I will breathe, I will be good.