Lilium

Sweetheart, what did you bury in the garden?

Fingernails, blackened by dirt, pick themselves apart. Earthblood stains pale skin, but the murder was kind. Your hands are shaking again.

Overhead, the glare of the bruised sun threatens to consume you. It sinks, lower and lower, until you become blind, left in dusk, where the things in the shadows lurk. Your hands are clean, but your heart is bleeding ink, spilling black from inside of you. There's a grave in the garden, crying.

You're swimming in the ocean, in a vast unknown, as salt laps at your wounds like a baleful dog, ignorant to the calls of his master. You're swimming but the water is cold, filling your lungs with lead. You're going to drown, you think, before the next wave kisses you dead.

He hands you a knife made of words, but you're already scarred; when he sleeps you press the blade into the softness of his throat and rend. You don't know how to love, only how to hurt. The words pour out, soaking into the bed sheets.

You blink it all away. It's night-time and the only thing in your hand is dirt. There are milk teeth in the grave, little monster kisses, rotten and pearly. You buried yourself in the garden, your flesh, your bones.

He finds you asleep next to the grave. It was kinder this way, he whispers in the deep timbre that keeps the waves at bay. There are dead stars in the sky, collapsing inwards into the darkness. You hold up a hand, bathed in moonlight, to grasp one.

The grave is silent on nights like these.

Reviews

[Kristan A. Mohammed]

You don't know how to love, only how to hurt.
These words hit me like a bullet. They remind me of me. You've written a very beautiful poem here. I really loved the language and your choice of words. Great job. Stay inspired.

[ChelseaJade]

Thank you so much!