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I ask you now, would you have loved me less, wings pressed to the sky like an effigy, like a plea bargain. Were you lying or were the buildings really that tall, was anything really that endless, our hearts that possible? It is true, I am pressing a knife to my own throat, it is true, I am speaking in tongues, whispering loud enough to cross lines you draw. I am exhausted; I am punishing my flesh because I don’t know what to do anymore with all the left over syllables. My mouth is a puncture wound, your fingertips dance, but not so gracefully as to go unnoticed. I am filling up with liquid, I am begging for disease the way most pray for a cure. Does this fever tell you anything about the weight of my veins, are the sirens a big enough hint, will you wrap the noose around my finger, a shy proposal, a bitter toast to the years I wasted following all the wrong voices, all of them mine, all of them rasping and broken. There is a word for people like us. Yes, darling, I said us. You can hide behind those bricks like my eyes won’t burn them but I once lived in that place you rest your head and I am not afraid to tell you what you are feeling. Millions of people, and I believe it is possible that many are happy. I just want to dive into the next bottle. It isn’t about the weight I’m keeping of, the incessant stomping of her feet. It is so much more than the walls I lie about, the hands that never hold each other. We love fist to fist, my mother’s lungs making their way into my chest. It is enough that we’ve lived here before, that our patience is worn to mesh, that our bones stretch like vines across walls littered with apologies. It is enough that I write in circles, watch your face change. Just let the water take me, just let the fire eat itself; let the earth crack right down the fucking axis. I just want to be swallowed, devoured, wrapped in anyone’s skin but my own. If she is my spine than I am her ribs. Call me Delilah, I will cut off your hair and pull down the columns. I will eat your trust, divide your weakness, I will call the soldiers in as you are sleeping. I know you’d do the same for me. I have carefully considered it, and this weight is not a gift. You would not recognize me, but you always do. I will beat down every door until you take me in your arms, until you remember me, until the light makes sense. I am the answer. I am the ghost of your childhood nightmare; I cannot imagine this is what it means to have a pulse.