there’s nothing left to say.


  outside, light bleeds from the earth
                                                                drawing the birds with it
      like veins in the sky

  and a sickly wind                                       slips
      through the leaves noiselessly
                                                                            and gives up.

what you name                         dusk
                is a graveyard of edifices        failing
                                against the angry gash of day

what you call parting
                is a splintered keening
                                                                severing the sea

in two. a                                                                pair of lungs
  recalled, swallowed                                               in saltwater
the soggy detritus                                                 of what comes


after the storm.

*

legend has it that
the one who is sinless
may cast the first
word. coarse and grating,

                it splits your face,
               that crooked maw,
                before it breaks
                my heart. you raise

the second word and
you have absolved
yourself, sinless.
when I come to, I find

                that you have buried me
                amongst the dead, my name
                a wound in stone, your name
                a wound in my mouth.

they say that no one
really knows who begins
a quarrel. they say that
deep in the night

                anger, like a suggestion,
                worms its way in,
                cleaving the tongue
                to bury a plague of wasps.

when the flock gathered
your lips parted
and the wasps became bees.
your mouth dripped

                with honey. no one noticed
                it pool like blood
                or how your hand strangled
                to kill the arm

of mercy. years later,
when the first word
has been forgotten
they will write

                our post-mortem in the sand
                their fingers slowly eroding
                until they reach the end of history
                at the start of stories.