As the dark sky turns to a livid bruise
you strip me with words and silences
of all my little lies, my comfortable vanities.
Always, at first, there is the little hesitation,
the cusp of night where levity teeters
like a coin tossed up into the airless void.
Your razor fingered grasp of the moment
slices dawn into bloody leaves of the past,
filmstrips of memory viscera.
Then the fall, the deep plunge into
the fearsome landscape of things
we don’t whisper to the sun.
I trust your surgeon’s tongue
to my unmaking and the sutured
spectre of a resurrection.
It’s not comfortable companionship,
my mad friend, my reluctant predator,
but it’s a worthy one.