by Kavi Kshiraj

look at the way your hollow boned ribs jut out and all the craggy shadows dripping between them and you’re hideous—you’re terrible, terrible and i’m cutting myself on your collarbone and i swear you’re beautiful when i splay fingers over your terrible face. once upon a time i said make me more than this and you said yes, you said yes, and i swear my skin itches like it’s falling off and tightening until a stranglehold all at once, i swear my body wasn’t meant to contain me like this. veins thread through your skin in a rorschach test of blue ink blots running and i could peel under the skin of your inner bird-wrist till i saw red, but your opened lips press promises to my hipbone and look at you—the glitter smeared to glimmer on your cheekbones and the stained-red of your lips against pale skin and you’re gorgeous—you’re grotesque. my blown-pupils are fixed to you and your gruesome form and the valleys between your vertebrae in the landscape of your back and i could say something about the duality of humanity, about beauty and terror, but once upon a time i said i want to be more than what i am and you listened. i trace your spine with long fingernails, leave bloody ogham lines behind—what have you made me?

 

[Kavi Kshiraj is an aspiring poet who’s wildly infatuated with the English language while simultaneously hating it for justifiable reasons. He enjoys writing of all forms and can usually be found hunched over a laptop, frantically typing. His tumblr, where you can find other works of his, is @moltengoldichor.]

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