Bind

There is a corpse decomposing into your bedsheets.

You can see the outline of its now brittle bones under its thinning flesh,

molting and draping into your mattress covers

blood vessels drifting into separate rivers, stretched sparse

lacerations on its chest, face beaten anonymous

from having lived and died too fast.

You take its hand and lightning strikes before you:

there she is, reading a book she wrote on her hand,

crying in the living room over a boy

shoplifting pink in the broken lining of her coat,

and there you are,

with your brass knuckles covered in blood.

Suddenly you are back at the start of the torus

in your slender grey coat,

hands dusty with ash

washed out and pale-blue,

fire at your fingertips

with your white matter stored in a jar on some top shelf collecting dust.

Shake the indecision away and walk towards her, again.

Rip the ribs out, one by one

take each bone apart

and weave them into your comforter

wash her flesh out of your pillowcases

and wear her copper-stained clothes

watch the bathtub overflow and let the room cloud up in steam.

This is the life you killed to live:

give the concrete walls one last glance and drape her eyes shut

shut the door behind you,

wrap the skeleton cloak around your body and

take it somewhere new.

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Cover Photo by Alyssia. Edited by Madison Case.