a small black fruit,
split open by the tongue.
I say it through rain,
through the wet animal heat of sleep,
through the years stacked between us
like coffins with no bodies in them.
Sometimes the distance is kilometres.
Sometimes it is a season
that died before it could finish blooming.
Still, I keep saying you.
My tongue catches.
My breath turns white.
The syllables drag themselves
back from the edge of my throat
like little drowned things.
Again, again, again.
As if the mouth were a bell
and your name the only death
it knew how to announce.
I will say you until my lungs become empty rooms,
until my tongue is a severed red ribbon
trembling in the dark.
And when the Grim Reaper comes—
not as a shadow,
not as a myth,
but with his cold, practical hands—
and takes my tongue,
I think I will still be trying
to make the shape of you
inside my mouth.