It pleases me to love you, lay you down—wait—no, the ground swallows me first, I wander where the air tastes like rot and rust, my teeth dissolve, my tongue whispers curses. Walls breathe, floors sigh, clocks vomit their hours, I touch your face—oh it’s dust, it’s smoke, it’s gone—gone—gone— It pleases me—no, the word breaks, splits into a scream, The sky folds inside itself, stars bleeding, laughter eating itself, I wander—everywhere and nowhere— The wind tastes like iron, like memory, like the ash of my own forgetfulness. I hold you, but my hands are worms, crawling inside the marrow, Every heartbeat echoes backwards, every shadow drags its teeth. It pleases me to love you, lay you down, yes, but the rest is a spiral, A spiral that eats the horizon, eats the light, eats me. I wander where the air tastes like rot and rust, I am a whisper screaming, a body dissolving, a thought choking. Faces crawl up walls, sing in broken syllables, I laugh—oh I laugh—but it’s my own bones laughing at themselves. It pleases me—pleases me—pleases me—to hold you in this void, Every sigh a fissure, every breath a fissure, I drift past mirrors that swallow mirrors that swallow mirrors, Time hiccups, folds, vomits its own entrails. I wander where the air tastes like rot and rust, And all the stars are dead fish floating in tar, I am everything and nothing, I am the scream inside the scream, the rust inside the rot, The black feather of a crow flapping in my chest. It pleases me to love you, lay you down, or is it me that’s lying down? I dissolve—I fold—I am no one, No one loves me, no one rests, the wind eats the words I cannot say, And I wander…always, always, where the air tastes like rot and rust.