Because we both have
held ourselves together
with fishnet as clothing;
because we both have lost
the ability to cry for real life
the way we cry for films;
because we both have dreamt
that our teeth are falling out—
moldering, crumbling, leaving
moonscape craters and the negative
space in smooth, hollow sockets;
I allow you, in
this desperate confusion, to turn my
head to face you. And I
no longer offer up only dead
hair matted with blood and gravel,
but my broken, red, wet wound of
a mouth, bleating, to which you press
the softest cotton, sopping me up.
I close my crushed eyes and,
comforted, listen to you chanting—
practically singing—“Oh god,
oh baby, oh fuck, no.”
(2004)
