The South Wing

Release

Did you infect me? Or-
was I only affecting myself,
to feel something
and call it love
so I wouldn’t feel so alone?

You wandering contradiction,
I contracted your disease.
Now I’m the one, in your absence,
who doles out my punishment.

The memories inscribed in chalk
wash away with every tide.
Our pictures tell a story
of two dimensional lies.
A truth within it all
is one that I can’t find.

To Love

I know what it is to love.
I’ve fallen down that rabbit hole- no, jumped
into its enticing abyss,
eyes open,
yet veiled by red silk.
It softens your jagged edges and obscures your full form
so that I see you silhouetted.
Is the glow of life that I’m inextricably drawn to
radiating from you-
or the sun behind you?
Can I escape from my chemical shackles,
extract my soul from my synapses,
so that I can look directly at you and know
if it is you,
or the light,
that is blinding me?

I know what it is
to love,
but I do not know what love
is.

“Hubris”

You invited me to unwrap
your cold cryptographies
and I obliged eagerly, and persevered,

wading deep in your barbed wire.
Persevered, though my hands
were raw and bloody with you.

Never learned that picking your thorns
would only prick my fingers
and, like Hydra, trying to extinguish
your demons would only multiply them.

Stubborn, I persevered. How charitable of me
to sacrifice myself to siphon your poison.
How noble a deed.