Subject 00172856

The air that night was like a pretty girl buying you a drink:
irresistible.
Pervasive, persuasive—the trouble with words is,
they all sound the same.
I can never keep them straight.

An army of ants marching over my skin:
a way in, a way in.

Don’t remember leaving, but then I was gone;
a wanderer, cursing the wet red jaw
flapping aimlessly, endlessly,
deaf to everything
but its own loose mewls.

And so I broke: I let it in.
And let me tell you,
blisssssssss
is a word I remember.

Filling me up till I could glow,
float,
almost fly;
I sucked it dry.

As an encore performance, the hand of god
shot down from the sky
and pierced my heart
(which promptly stopped short
to reflect, and regret, its every beating).

There are some things not even your great grey god can know, though;
things like stopping my heart, turning my chest soft and shiny and snarled
as silk
is not enough
to stop me.

Kill me once, and send a second bolt of lightning
to finish the job, hands clean,
and I’ll only force it to keep going.
My heart, that is—not god’s hand.
Maybe I could stay that, too;

but I’d rather next time
his aim were true.