You went incautious to the end at odds with the ghosts of September. Accepted a steel bloom that bathed in your blood as a splinter would. You called it the religion of love. How it hurt. Yes, that must have been love. To lie inanimate, to spit at the sky— it was for love. It was always for love. At last your calling. Bloodberry leaves swaying above your prayers, your nails piercing crimson into flesh unloved—mine. Your wine stain on my lips, red sea glass that undid redemption; the passion that litters me. You are the blood skies to a church aflame in mind. And the cross of gold at God’s reach is your mouth, open to storms. Holy beyond thought. No sense, for love Only running after feeling. Forgetting true self, believing that was true self. You unearthed the salvation that took me like a lover forgotten, while tears served you as diamonds. You pinned them across your throat, adorning yourself with your own damnation, forgetting what lights this, over all things. You loved me with the very red of your heart. Made a home and a kingdom where no whisper knew my name. I could not be found in you. No working clock could chime the hour where the blood pact nixed from our hearts. You, ever the angel of remiss, unmade me from the life that gave us each other. Amassed pain to love, and took with you nothing but my compassion.
Sandra Tirado, “Nixed” published in The Dinner Table Review
