I've been in your body, baby, and it was paradise.
I've been in your body and it was a carnival ride.

I don't really blame you for being dead but you can't have your sweater back.

You can sleep now, you said. You can sleep now. You said that.
I had a dream where you said that. Thanks for saying that.
You weren't supposed to.

The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater
because he is trying to kill you,
and you deserve it, you do, and you know this,
and you are ready to die in this swimming pool
because you wanted to touch his hands and his lips and this means
your life is over anyway

Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more.

You wanted happiness, I can't blame you for that,
and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy
but tell me
you love this, tell me you're not miserable.

We pull our boots on with both hands
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do
is stand on the curb and say Sorry
about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of
lullabies.

The way you slam your body into mine reminds me
I'm alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling,
and they're only a few steps behind you, finding
the flaw, the poor weld, the place were we weren't
stitched up quite right, the place they could almost
slip right through if the skin wasn't trying to
keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side
of the theater where the curtain keeps rising.

O how he loves you, darling boy. O how, like always, he invents the monsters underneath the bed to get you to sleep next to him, chest to chest or chest to back, the covers drawn around you in an act of faith against the night.