outsourced

Remember when you took me swimming and you said,

between breaths,

I will be right here, by your side, come hell or high water? I held on, dear, for

life knowing you knew I feared the water and things I could not see.

I never imagined I'd look back and find myself shipwrecked,

crack-lipped and corpse-surfing back to shore.

You knew I bled from the house to the fence as you took my suit

from the line, watching dorsal fins from the corner of your eye.

A champagne kiss convinced me the water was warm and your

heart in place,

suddenly denying,

you'd placed it in another's satin box of stained jewels,

dripping off the neighbor's greener grass, that bush

of sharp and tangled betrayals. A kiss I saw from beneath

my own thigh, my own pink demise.

I swim with a soaked and dripping faggot clenched between my teeth,

knowing it's sealing my lungs hoping it'll be done

before I reach the sand, too afraid to let go.

let go.

torn asunder.