Martyr

Being awake was a kind of poison, and dream was the only antidote.

One thing happens, then the next. For a long, long time

I belong here. But not him, this boy, not his cathedral hands.

What was there to complain about? A murdered wife? A sore back? The wrong grade copper? Living happened till it didn’t. There was no choice in it. To say no to a new day would be unthinkable. So each morning you said yes, then stepped into the consequence.

Immortal soul sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal

“Now we definitely get to lick more squares when we get home,” Cyrus said, grinning.

I squeezed his calf a little and looked up at his face, which was unaccountably calm, if pale. He looked chipper even, probably at having a new excuse to take more fentanyl. Something delicate released in my chest, like a gold ring dropping in a bowl of milk.

He could probably get away with bumming the occasional cigarette now and again, but in his mind he was saving that for something momentous: his final moments lying in the grass dying from a gunshot wound, or walking in slow motion away from a burning building

like a tongue in a mouth between bites

“I don’t even know what my higher power is.”

“That didn’t stop you from getting on your knees with me a year ago and asking it to remove your suffering.”

“Asking what?” Cyrus asked. “What were we even talking to?”

“Who cares?” Gabe answered. “To not-your-own-massive-fucking-ego. That’s the only part that matters.”

“ ‘Living the poems you’re not writing?’ ” Zee scoffed. “C’mon, you’re better than that.”

“I’m really not,” Cyrus said, sharply, before stepping out the apartment door.