Grief #346
I grieve the men I swallowed like stolen pills.
I grieve the nights I tried and failed to purchase a second pair
of legs. A third. I grieve the ease with which I pulled bodies
into my body. I kept them all; I am crowded. I grieve the filth
of the twenty-dollar bill, the G-string’s faded pink, the stench
of my want, the pit stain of my hunger. I grieve the lights on
at last call. I grieve your face, suddenly fluorescent lit. I grieve
the “sure.” I grieve the “why not.” The bodies I begged,
the bodies I borrowed, the bodies I broke and broke under.
I grieve snowfall on a ruined hand mirror. I grieve the men
I mistook for one another and the mistakes I mistook for men.
I grieve the bodies I thought beneath me and the body I became.
I grieve the dawns I killed and the days I slept through. I grieve
the sweat I left behind like a shadow. I grieve every name I called out
in the dark. I grieve that I never, not once, called out my own.
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