"Love me right / love me right / love me right now..."

Taught not to tangle with tenderness

Swallowed the sun just to end the mess

Sick from the sweet, still I sip finesse

Bitter on the tongue where the red moon rests

Candle in a cage of a metal lung

Choke on the smoke where the letters hung

Told her I’m numb, but I never was

Told her I’m numb, but I never—

wait

wait

wait

Run-run-run from the root of the ache

Fake-face faith when the fluid breaks

Tried to write vows with a toothpick blade

But the ink ran out on the fourth mistake

(If I fracture, would you vow to vow?)

(Or just trace me in chalk when I’m underground?)

You—folded my pride like a paper note

Tucked in a coat that your ex-boy wrote

Said “love ain't neat,” but you still took quotes

From the mess of a man tryna read footnotes

Cut.

Start.

Bleed.

Mark—

I been sleeping in the quiet of a question mark

I been leaking little pieces of a softer art

I been keeping all the letters in a weathered jar

Waiting for the day you say my name like

a

sudden

start

Let me be less than the sum of my tension

Let me be more than a manic confession

Let me be limbs in the lake of your blessing

Let me be wrong in the rightest direction

Your silence bends like a cello in flame

I say your name in a temple of shame

If I’m not enough, then reduce me again

If I’m not enough—then just use me as rain

(Touch me where the damage won’t shout)

(Or leave me where I finally drown)

Love—

the kind that cuts clean.

The kind that—

takes

time

then

rips at the seams.

Hold me.

Don’t hold me.

Hold me.

Hold me

Hold me

Hold me