PATRIOTISM |
Your name still blossoms on my lips like a bleed. And I still imagine your scarred chest, torn open wide like a mouth in song, shrapnel finding shelter in your ark of ribs. And your face, half- eroded with blood, your eyes half-open at the painful split of bones and gristle. I still think of your mother mourning your death, your body resting in a trench, then a grave, and your anatomy: your blueveins, a body I knew from flank to foot, casting a shadow on my sheets, your skin, once warm against mine, now pocked with holes, like a cut of seacoral, a honeycomb. |