I am courting my own funeral.
I know the coffin is shaped like her arms,
I know the dirt tastes like her kiss,
yet I climb back into the grave
because the air outside burns my lungs.
She is a living death.
And I am the necrophiliac of my own soul.
03:00 AM.
I wake up.
The Manic Hope sits on my chest.
"I can do this," he lies. "I can handle the rot."
"I just don't want to lose her."
He stitches the wound closed.
04:00 AM.
I wake up.
The Primal Terror is screaming.
"I can't handle it anymore."
"Let her go. Let the infection leave."
He rips the stitches out.
Eight times a night, I perform surgery on myself.
Four times I suture.
Four times I tear.
By morning, the bedsheets are soaked in invisible blood.
I don’t know where my anatomy begins or ends.
My mind has fallen into my chest, drowning in panic.
My heart has crawled into my skull, thinking stupid, suicidal thoughts.
They are at war,
and I am the battlefield they are burning down.
Is this love?
Or is this just the fear of the silence?
Was her enslavement so absolute
that I am fighting for a freedom I am too terrified to touch?
I ask the ceiling:
Is it better to die in her arms, being eaten alive?
Or to die alone, starving in the cold?
I am so broken that the damage feels like home.
I am so devastated that I seek the hammer that shattered me.
I want to try again.
I want to close my eyes forever.
I want to fix my fucking heart and mind in the same direction,
but they are fused together in the wreckage.
Am I doomed?
The question echoes in the hollow ribcage.
The answer is the silence
between the fourth time I wake up screaming
and the fifth time I reach for her ghost.