It's Still Life

Same Old Skin — (after a song by Asaf Avidan – My Old Pain) 

The willow
weeps
but not
for me.
(fucking willow —
dances
like a noose.)

It bends
for winds
I cannot
see.
(wind.
it rips
the sky
from its own
mouth.)

I wear my ache
like leather worn —
(torn,
cracked,
smiling
through its
seams.)
This old skin
with teeth at my throat.

I’m a hull
splintered where ropes
once called me —
useful.
(It is a wound
without a knife;
an ocean
that says:
you were never
thirsty.)

The sea
denies me
again.
Each wave —
a mouth
too full
of night.
(even hurricanes
get lost
sometimes.)

I am
a shell
still singing
storms
I never
survived.
Original sin
tastes like soup
gone cold.
(but I like it
that way.)

No sin is new —
just aged
too well
in its own
dark.

I’m in love
again,
or something
like it.
The bruise fits.
The glove
fits.

This is a poem
that bites
back.