if it's true
that a relapse is worse by nature..
well.
you used to murmur old hymns,
remnants of an addiction once all-controlling like religion.
it continues to compel your mouth to move in your sleep sometimes,
even all these years after you drained your esophagus of holy water
and shut the chapels of your eyelids down,
only down.
(until now.)
they've been closed to the erratic waves of haggard impulses for so long,
those sightless pilgrims wandering the paths of your nerve endings with etiolated lamps in hand.
(sparking fires wherever they gave in and fell,
soot stains outliving their vagabond bodies,
raising gravestones all up your arms.)
how cold the network has been,
conquered by disuse,
the emaciated prey of my patience.
the churches like empty cigarette cartons.
the apses painted over.
the steeples ringing distantly with forgotten phone-calls.
(and i always answered.
i always answered you.)
but today
three a.m. broke and spilled all over our doorstep,
died somewhere halfway down the hall.
and the clouds released from its motionless body, they,
well.
black and chemical blue,
filling our house,
reminding you
of incense.
you licked your lips and remembered how,
languished,
they used to come.
to bathe in it,
to pray in it and bare their perambulating souls to it,
its cleansing color.
the mouths hung open and tipped up in hopes of swallowing some of the raw paroxysms of power.
and from somewhere beneath soot-stained soil, a lamentation stirred.
you held your breath and were reminded of how they used to moan their gratitude to you.
if it's true
that a relapse is worse by nature,
then they must be coming by the hundreds up your vertebrae now.
and i'd do anything to snap them out of you somehow,
but you're not nearly as steady as you think.
(if you could see yourself..)
and you're hopelessly fragile in these fits of conviction.
i can not bring myself to shake them out of you,
like woodlice from aspen leaves.
i'd never forgive myself for trying to twist them into extinction,
your spine would snap,
oh you poor medical complexity,
i only can will my voice to love them back into their graves.
(if you speak,
then their voices will come out.
and i can't listen to that again-
that's why i have to hold both my hands over your mouth,
my love.)
three a.m. still sprawled smoking in the hallway,
your eyes wide open,
church bells howling at a fading moon.
as always, your wordless shadow stands over you
(both of us)
and does nothing to help.
\\\
