Jake Byrne, 2023

We passed on horseback without speaking
    Through cities of bleached bone and powdered glass
    When I plunged my pen into the lich’s mirror
You told me you’d given me everything I needed

My marital bed a ditch where milk-sky and memory admix
    You said true love never promises to stay
    Some needs come second to the resumé
Relapse with me. Let’s be adepts playing at cantrips

A pocketful of perfumed air
    Chokeberries’ dark epistles
    Your cum congealing on the hair of my chest
These magic missiles

But all illusions wane, crumble like lichen in a dry season
    I can recall the rite but cannot perform the ritual
    You can lead a hearse to water, but it’s no Viking funeral
Not for the cursèd opaque waterbed of your elfin immigration lawyer

Not for the scarred arms of the berserker otter
    Who fucked me raw against the wall
    Promising all the while he’d pull out graceful as
A siege of herons from the water

He showed me how to rip a bezoar from the stomach of a kid
    A sea of mead could not satisfy my id
    Nor could a kiss land gentle as a fist
My harvest-sworn companion, how did we come to this?

I meant to say I loved you
For you I’d remake the world as mine
Who cares. It doesn’t matter. Forget about it. Nevermind