Though sometimes I want to be. 

Sometimes I sit
a fit little bitch
taut and naked
as a stump.
Sometimes I dream. 

Sometimes all I want
is to play the doll
in the funhouse
of your nightmares. 

Sometimes I want
to crush your hand
into a million papercuts
Sometimes I want
to kiss you hard and flat
against the wall
and let you slap me around
for an hour or two. 

Sometimes I want you
to cauterize this meaty crimson
fist of a heart. 

Sometimes I want you
to trek with me
across the earth until heaven
grants just one little cure. 

Sometimes I loosen
my tongue so hard it lays
with me on the ground
as a python, and wraps
around me like a gauze,
though I am not quite so
servile as to suffocate
inside your arms. 

Sometimes I fight
for a plane ticket south,
in tow a suitcase
full of cement and wetnaps.

Sometimes I hear
the rats in the walls. 

Sometimes, I think,
“Why should they go free?”
these arteries blocked
by a plague so black
I stir like a fish
from the bag they feed,
like rain drips through
the clouds, like morphine
weeps through the veins
of a patient’s lobotomy. 

Sometimes I want you,
dear lovely, to open
your heart for me
by the scalpel, and let
me have a taste as sweet
as death is to a strawberry. 

Sometimes I taste it
twice: once when the muck
goes in, and twice
when I throw it all away, my teeth
so rotted through with my love
for you I drip from the mirror
the seedling nerves
of a vampire’s tooth. 

Sometimes, I don’t. 

Sometimes, 

I do, 

I do, 

I do.