you took my hand and i saw
bones leap from flesh, shedding bloodlines,
stark white and grinning naked
above discarded piles of skin
left crumpled on the tile

you spoke me out of my molding coffin
the kind that rots in open eyes,
on fearful lips and withered hands.
I found myself hoisted into the ceiling,
to watch, to wait

for armistice: the warring tribes lived beyond
the reach of my fingertips, and death
had built a graveyard between my arms
and your body. i swore i'd never closed my eyes,
but darkness claimed me anyway

it always did, it always would.
i played hopscotch with the onslaught,
i was rained under, kept down
kicking, i hurled my weight into other realms.
trembling beneath the wake.

no gentle flow, this. it rocked me, and
my mouth melted away at the furious taste
before it could speak in antidotes and tongues.
i questioned only once the weight
of water, and was told it measured three

times the weight of man. i clutched two
empires between my webbed fingers. i was
a snake in the dragon's aftermath,
my vertebrae snapped and floundering.
i waded through the birthlight,
scathed, broken, battered.
the screaming touch
that marked me last
was a subtlety of death.

10/07/2003

Author's Note: Joint effort between myself and the brilliant Rachelle Howe-- the raw unedited first draft is in her library as "topic: screaming subtleties". Two is twice the power of one, haha.

Posted on 10/08/2003
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