hold your knife to my chest.
breathe in, breathe out, hold your breath a moment
press just hard enough that I bleed,
but not enough that it starts to hurt,
and notice that I'm still breathing.
we're destroying ourselves, aren't we?
I hear your voice over the phone
in the middle of the night, and all you're asking
is that I come home. 'home, where is it?' I say,
and you go quiet. how do we know where home is
when we don't yet know who we are?
mothers are supposed to die before their
children but first they're supposed to
offer their children their home, and maybe
their life too, when they're feeling up to it,
but we both died when we went through the front door.
the hinges are rusty and smell like blood.
you never liked the colour red
except when it was on your lips, when it
gave you power. there's no power here.
home is where the heart is but
all hearts do is pump blood.
is that what you're trying to do?
bleed for me, die for me? don't.
offer me the knife and I
will take it by the blade.
we bleed together and
we will not die here, not today.
