feeling myself loosening around moorings. my thick ropes unknotting, casting off from the familiar weight i've grown so used to carrying around. now, to deep water. hair falling out of its braids. tectonic plates shifting.

the exhale slow panic
my new shape was carved by your absence
i could have died watching you
the years of bad love
i would not relent until i relented
an ugly story
ripening on my rotten lips
my rotten fingers

i fell in love again
this is essential
i don't know for how long
please be here tomorrow

(what! everyone wants to thrust their fingers into a silence and rip it apart. my head in my hands, i think in images. sometimes i don't even know what i'm looking at)