to adonis – Aniela Hayes

August 21, 2024

please
i want to pull bugs
out of your bellybutton
and your ears
let me under your skin
to see how it feels
to be in your shoes
i think ive been there
and i think i heard leya tell me that im a lover
and i think i heard her say that
me and her are everything alike
me and her are everything you hate
me and her have come to realize
that i fall in love with men
that hate women
i beg for their hatred
i pray they eat me up and spit me out
please keep me safe from everything but yourself
please I feel so deeply I turn even your hate into love.
Please let me take care of you.
Please I’ll cook you some thing from the broken cupboard that you wouldn’t even think to fix
please me and all my roommates have rotting hinges and theyre telling me you hate me
please will you do what you always do
and fuck me till I think it’s love
and love me till I’m fucked
and whisper about how I’m your heaven
how not even the gods could dream up my beauty
how I taught you what love is
how I make your heart flutter
how youd swim in my eyes for the rest of your life
but you were always good with words
and I was always this way
so I pushed you out
and because I know of your hatred of cigarettes
and all things that burn I’d smoked the whole pack just so you’d leave
and my roommate filled your mouth with the ash
and like the piñata of black dust and disabled love you were
you burst into a deep chokehold of fear.
I guess that’s all you were though
afraid
and I suppose you may not always be that way
but as you swim in my eyes still
it’s all I see
some form of a dead bluebird
that savored in its sickness
that once fluttered in my heart
and now wallows in my stomach
now I lie awake
and snort Coke from the empty tin candles you bought me
the black wick dances like it’s still on fire
and I can taste salt water ketamine backwash
down my throat
to the place that taste like you
like home
and suddenly it’s all too much.
We were always too much
and without you I find that everyone taste like salt

and I think everyone would taste like home
if I licked them long enough.