I am (Phantom)

I was always all cuts.

They covered my skin with invisible ink,

but only I could see them.

I didn’t know how gashes truly felt

until I met your tongue:

Cut up on love.

Cut up on pain.

Cut up on all of you.

I couldn’t clean up all the milk we spilt,

or remove the leftover grinds of pour over coffee once shared

from the crevices of my stomach,

which we both knew was sensitive

and vulnerable.

You were clumsy,

but I always clumsier

and it is difficult to point fingers.

But it matters not.

For I am choking

and you are thrusting.

And I am drowning

and you are conquering vessels emptier

than the one I am now.

You are hosting warm bodies

and I am all hauntings.

All ghost fingers pressed against stubble

and unwanted possessions of lips once lingering.

I am bleeding open,

I am stitched.

I am intensity,

I am barren.

I am haunting and haunted and failed exorcisms and phantasms of grave-dug dreams.

You are finding homes

in houses of flesh on weekends.

And I am lost on my own,

in abandoned hearts and transparent wounds

still fully fresh and irreparably bruised.