bare-bones

the sun king has returned and he's drinking all my café

—i'm reduced down to a single molecule of dust particles when he stares me in the pupil

he's got a hold on me
catching at my sweater sleeves
pulling at the frayed edges
leaving me without warmth

and of course i thank him for it
i thank him for caring enough
to deal with a varmint like me
for forcing me to learn how to survive
the coldest tundra

he really knows how to slip into my skull and mess around in my heart valves like my body is the saddest theme park for him to stroll around

is an expert on the end of days
fluent in the dead-of-night-i-can't-make-it out-alive whispers                       
it's his native tongue, he says
he learned how to speak mine so quickly

said it was easy to train his mouth to form such simple sounds
it tastes like salt and coffee and

dry dry dirt
and
wet wet mud

he calls me la belle contradiction
because my bones don't fit my skin much
my eyes are too big for my heart
and i'm tiny in size but the largest mess he's ever encountered

"now, don't let that make you feel special" he adds

and i scoff at him as if that were ever a possibility

"how do you do it?" he asks one day
tap tapping his milky chin
with one ring layered finger

"how can you bear living in abandoned graveyards with all those decaying bodies and
oh, all of those positively disgusting bugs
how do you craft beds out of tombstones without waking old demons, ma cherie?"

but i don't survive
the demons don't stay dead
louis, you are all of the demons               
you are the graveyard                                 
and every single bone in my body

maybe they called you le roi du soleil
and maybe the sun burned for you
every goddamn day

and maybe you thought yourself a god
but you don't grant life nor do you sustain it
you reduce and minimize
who the hell told you otherwise?

and i'm no royal
but my blood gets by
even without your divine dna

(which here stands for "dynasty never again")

so i'll be waiting for you
right here
in the graveyard bonfire that i made
alive to fight you, your coffin ablaze

Lugubriously,
                        RB

a/n: bones take so long to burn.