A poem about Aristotle and Dante, and queer first love.

--

Fifteen.

I’m floating face down in a pool.

You are the boy in the red jacket

You are the boy with a mouth full of stars

I want you to kiss me so I can hurt you

So I can beat you with my fists and say all the words

I whisper to myself in the dark, in my bed

Alone with my betrayer, my executioner

My hand, Judas

Your hand, beloved John.

We are the silence after a long film.

We are the dark inside a matinee.

We are the empty space between one street lamp

And another.

You kiss me.

In the end you always do what you want.

I want to hold you down on the floor

I want to put my thumbs into your eyes.

I want to rip you open like a cannibal

I want to bathe in your blood, in your body—

I want to wear your skin.

I want to say cruel things to my friends

While wearing your skin.

I want to hurt you where you won’t see.

I want to hurt you where you can’t touch.

I kiss you.

This is premeditation.

You don’t understand a damn thing.

I am the body without the blood

I am the dull knife between your thighs

I am the blood orange in the green bowl

I am the still life you are painting

Of the orange in the green bowl.

I am the high note in a love song.

This is a love song.

I wish we were both dead.

You take off all my clothes.

I am washing you out of my eyes

I am putting your head under water.

You are the change in pressure

You are the air pressed out of the room.

You are the boy with his hands on my neck—

You are the hands on my neck.

I am nothing but bits and pieces.

I am a million grains of sand.

I am all cracked open.

I am the yoke on the floor.

I am the sticky sweet of cigarettes.

I am the thunder before the storm.

I am caught between your fingers.

Just give me something that belongs to you.

Tell me something true

Unless I don’t want to hear it.

Read my mind.

I wish you’d just be nothing.

I wish you’d just stop swimming.

I wish you’d just give up.

You are God’s shoe shine.

You are the bird that flies away.