phantom limbs

VIII-III:

we lay inside drained city pools until our bodies became the pavement

held hands outside of hells gate, breathing in the smoke from your lungs, talking about ghost lights over the east river

walking through a sleeping burrough of frowning stone faced houses you asked how i want to die, i asked the time.

you fucked me on a white bed of ash while calling out shapes and colors of passing clouds

there were cats fighting beneath us, screaming louder than myself, or simply, more passionately

i watched all the tiny pieces of myself drift apart through the floorboards and cracked walls that night

onto damp streets and subway cars, away from the place where i knelt to repent my sins with a mouthful of holy water and a headfull of rum, away from the boiling blue irises that started to feel like home.