The Colour Thickest of All

Close your body into mine--

for it's 4am and the rain is lashing
down, potholes in the sidewalk
swell from the weight of the
water--

endless.

But we're sleeping under
the mango tree
we planted together when
we were seven?
You're snuggled against my bony chest.
You're safe inside my arms.
But
Who are you?
Why did I pick you?
What was in you,
That I fell?
Heart first and aching--
my curled toes and chafed elbows following course?
Do you deserve
my blood?
My bile?
My sinews?
My stitches?

Turns out you're the dopamine designed to destroy.
Yet I find haven now--
it is the crinkled yellow seed of a rose that spreads into bloom--
tended by tender hands
and allowed to keep its thorns,
despite the danger they hold.

Love, I name it.
Destined to droop.

But I am a careless pickers of hearts.
Savage and ruthless.
I trample my own garden as
the delicate puddle of blood
chokes your throat as you gag,
tasting of smoked salt and rust.
I scream.
We dance out a scene. Yet,
It hurts to see you die.

My pockets hold secrets of death,
a small vial--
the eye refuses to linger on.
But on and on it does.
Like a tongue missing a broken tooth,
lapping over the scar tissue hungrily.

We deserve it, I whisper--
as the second vial goes down.
It takes thirty minutes to bleed out
and I count each one down
with a passion you made me
hide from
Myself.

As life slips out of me
in the colour thickest of all,
I think about those nights--
when you held me down and took me.
I refused to close my eyes
somewhere around the
eleventh time
as you whispered in my ear
with wine stained teeth.

I refused.
Because I plotted.
And waited,
waited,
held my breath
as if it were made of pure gold.
As if air were diamonds.
I will get back to you.

Now I watch you shudder
and take your last breath.

I take the rope from my picnic basket
and wrap it around the mango tree
we planted together when we were
seven? 

And for the last time,
I snuggle you against my bony chest.
You're safe inside my arms.

At  4:34am I kiss
the shallow cheek of Death.
My only regret being not doing it
soon enough.

A roar from the crowd--
"More! More!"

but there is no More.

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