He says, Someday I will stop carving my initials into your bedpost
and we’ll add ours to a tree instead.
Someday nevermore will finally be forever.
He says, Please don’t think I’ve given up on us.
It’s just that some days I am less body and more body bag.
I want to tell him, The riverbeds in this town
have lost too many women to count
and now your name sounds like nothing more than a curse word.
There is holy the way deserts run dry
and still the dead search for mirages,
and then there is holy the way bears swallow birds
without even leaving their bones behind
to make wishes from.
Damage a thing and this doesn’t make it pretty.
No one ever really understands how lullabies are not for children,
but for the monsters beneath their beds
we’ve tried so hard not to fall in love with.