Tell me I’m nothing

Only

the atrophied animal
sleeping at your ankles.

No need to chain me
to the bedpost.

Every seduction needs only
the smallest of aches.
Every concession: my shoulder
tapping your shoulder.

My teeth
tapping your teeth.

See already I’m your error.
I can be anybody’s
ivy yard. See

I am more
than just my heartache.
More than my strangeness.
More than my arms
tied up together.

Empty bucket. Spineless
bird. Well

even if you know me
like a nightmare
and undress me
with your moonlit mouth,

it still won’t be enough.
Sometimes
everything works out
but

no. It doesn't.

Please don't
do that thing
anymore, please
forgive me. For this
and for everything else
that's coming.

Know I never meant
to let you tunnel into me
like that. The way love
twists into a heart,
mercilessly.
And keeps twisting.

I believed you when you said
this would not be gentle,

but I imagined
there was nothing left unbruised
when we met, that I was someone

ossified, if threadbare.
And crawling with larva.
Overflowing with ghosts.

I really thought I could take it.

But then everything went silent.
Eventually,
I opened my mouth.
Meaning,

I can be your downpour.
I can be your death.

Each night, I know
I dragged you through
the gutter of this.
How could you
refuse me

once you'd turned me over.
Once you made me
your sorrow, your specter.
Your spiral staircase. Your
cistern full of pond water.
When you said do this
and I wanted to.
Believe me.

My regret would flood this basement.
My remorse would burn this house down.

What could stay upright
in the aftershocks of this.
Anything broken
stays broken and we can’t
take the bones out of our bodies.
We can’t put the words
back in our mouths.
I can't unsay that I loved you.

Now that you're gone
the moon follows me home.

Tell me again how I’m careless.
Serrated. Forgotten.
Your penitence. A mouth
gag. Your garbage. 

Your favorite
aberration.
Tell me I'm nothing.

You refuse
to dismantle this,
but I don’t.

If it's harder to unlove a thing
why couldn’t you just leave me there
all those nights
with my empty stomach
and my black glass house
under the porchlight

alone,
alone,
alone.