Echo

When you were a baby I sat very still to hold you. I could see the veins through your skin, a map to inside you. I stopped breathing so you wouldn't. You were just a boy on a bed in a room, like a kaleidoscope is a tube full of broken glass. But the way I saw you was peices refracting the light, shifting into an infinite universe of flowers and rainbows and insects and planets, magical dividing cells, pictures no one else knew. You curled your fingers around mine, so tight. It was the first time I knew I had a heart inside my body.

You still cry too easily, but without your tears the world would burn. You are spring in your jeans, the laughing leaves. I think pearls melted over your bones. Would you tell me?
You try but your tongue feels severed.

Your garden was combing her hair and putting on her earrings. The house was full of dancing creatures, two lovers in one body. The books downstairs were reciting their poetry to eachother, whispering through their leather backs. Wine was flowing through the pipes. You had caught my heart in your hand like a leaping fish.

Then the man took you, caught your lips like slices of meat. He burned like ice cubes. A searing jolt of numbness. A slick ointment. You wanted his poison. Asleep without dreams. Dreams of him. The bird's throat made a savage sound.

You became his religion. You were flattened and bloodless
like the thing beating in your chest.

Were you ever alive?