Backhanded compliment

When the fist is your refuge,

The bloodletting is

Your dangerous wish. He

Likes to turn on his side.

Likes to make you wish

He would yell. If only

To be mistaken for violent compassion.

Your hands have coated themselves

In tremors. A reaching

For some sort of salience. They

Want to be worthy of their love's

Worth.

They feel too easily cast away.

You hate yourself

Because you know you would

Trade the silence for a tirade

Of door handles to your cheekbones,

Of matches to your palm;

Memories that your departure

Was feared.

You have met these women. Held

Them. Men. You would have freed them

If they would have allowed it.

And you hate yourself.

You wonder if there is worth

In this.

A glassful of broken beauty:

Unspeakable in its deaths.

And just once...you carefully

Place a hammer

Not wishing,

But at peace, comfort

With the recovery months of hug

And coddle.

2

I am sorry I could not remember
The name that you stole;
I have never been one to swallow rain.
My fingertips were holding tight
To my palm. I believed that to fight this
Would win you over.

My body likes to make fun of psychics like this
To prove that it can lose its own battles:
Nobody will tell me where I wind up.
Not until someone can tell me
Where I've been.

Tonight is a new kind of savior.
My breath is held
My knees are begging me
To stand.