…she cultivated an existence because of Death…around His hands and posture…He ignited her for her own good…to flesh out truths even He couldn’t chase…and she was an inferno and unconstrained…it made His laughter smell of boiling water to be in close proximity to her…His words incubi at bedsides of saints when she set to conjuring sins…He liked to dissect her…ether for His dreams…and it set her heart aflame…a cannibal combustion of consumption…not a trace of proof of her existence…mere ash and dust for His fingers to glyph…but every design calibrated to a new magnetism...and each attempt was powerless to the formulation of your name...

...He had awaited a headlight in piano traffic serenade…He felt the loss of her life in a metronome percussion…and He ran foolish tongue to barren teeth mining for golden words of coercion...but His conscience got the best of Him...allowing for Him to sit back in silence and give her the space to let free will decide if she'd walk towards or away...she confided she wanted the disaster...so He gave her life after the line went flat...and she resurrected at the cusp of when the expansion of lungs feels near rib cage capacity on a ventilator…

…you laid your back flat on a faded area rug…crimson indigo bone…undone…unaware...her grave was dug, but empty...

…and so she lived and loved you, never knowing with certainty of your existence…but she hoped...she loved before her eyes could see...the visage the world saw, and the shadow that exuded true power...and when she wrote letter after letter...her neck, a vulnerable thread, was always exposed as a sign of trust in your near presence...her teeth when bared in smile, a sign of restraint for the hunger she longed to sate…your taste for the world undefined upon her tongue...

...her awareness of the truth...of your existence and welcome...it was bright like aneurysm shock…and the guise of nothing laying beneath the sheets…of flesh peeling flesh…and metaphors in rounded vessels…a hum that screams the obvious…ever so absent, then ever so present…

…and your lust for solitude...silhouettes of lava pulling, morphing, melting…you wear it thick as agave running down and between your slender fingers, moulding to the lines of thoughts in curve…you abandon her name in your walk...you pocket her existence like inconveniences...

...both hide their love like an M80 in a coffee tin...

E.A. O’Connell