NEPTUNE BURNS

We were both starving

i.
I doused myself in vinegar before she tasted me
Built myself into the verbatim of gregorian chants to summon a rapturous demon to slaughter her sleep
I clawed pentagrams in razor slices along my thighs and let her lick the sweat of a loveless woman while disguising it as holy water
Kissed open the pit in her stomach that craved food and plied her mouth with arsenic covered chocolate
Let her call me her baby let her claim me as hers let her clamor into my marrow and deem me her god
I let her devour me in whole pieces that stuck to her throat and clogged her arteries with strawberry seeds that held bitter rotten tears
In exchange for her heart I let myself be defiled on scratchy woolen sheets patterned in heart-shaped knives that cut into skin / into bone / into empty stomach pits

ii.
She dove into my clear chlorine filled pool with sharpened acrylic nails and a penchant for scratching throats
Filled me with her cherry flavored saliva that coated her chapped lips with a sheen brighter than some stars shine
Stuck raspberries onto the tips of my fingers and slowly crushed them with her thorn coated tongue
Stuck pins into the edges of my body till my limbs were so frayed with shredded red that I dropped into the saccharine blueberry pools of her eyes
When she found me / lungful of crystalline bubbles plopping pool-water / cherry pits imbedded in my throat
She threw my laden body next to the pool and let a new wave overtake her till I was no body just driftwood limply gliding on the torrent of a bursting tempest disguised as a golden river

iii.
Floating inside water is impossible until you learn it is possible to drown on air
It is possible for her to want to be the executioner and the martyr and love me so much she must hurt me
It is possible to feel peace in gulping down embers that skin your tongue till you cannot chant to a god that echoes your pleas into a whirlpool of empty stars
It is possible to want someone so bad you allow your world to revolve around them as long as you can claim pieces of their heart with whispered 'forgive me's' hidden in oracles of blanketed reassurance and misguided destruction

iv.
We tasted stars on empty kisses filled with lemons & sugar / carved archaic symbols on emblazoned hearts / sucked apple cider from fermented pools
We likened our love to blazing comets iced in glass covered memories crashing into mountains of inevitability
We swallowed ourselves and felt no end to this need

v.
How do you stop craving a tearful goodbye / an open letter apology / a last look when there was never a promise it would not end in gnarled ruin disembodied & disemboweled for vultures to pick at

thrusts for having such gorgeous poetry that makes me weep