ii. this love burns you and maims you and twists you inside out, Dante Émile
CW: violence
Every day a bullet wound, every day fresh shrapnel to harvest from my chest.
There are four eyes in the mirror and none of them want to look at me.
There are four footprints in the snow and they all stop at the doorway.
When I love you I lose myself and when I don’t I disappear,
and I’ve given up on trying to hate you.
Slice me open and call it a promise, hold my heart down and call it a slaughter.
If there’s blood under your fingernails it means I’ve won.
If there’s blood under your fingernails it means you haven’t scrubbed hard enough, and the stain on your floor will only grow larger.
The line of your teeth speaks of salvation, and I’m greeting God with a double-edged
sword.
Stick something between my ribs and watch it come out of your back,
and who but I will want to stitch you up now?
Kiss my cheek or split my skull in two,
the outcome is still the same.
Dante Émile is a Mexican, gay, transmasculine author based in Barcelona. They write both in English and Spanish about topics such as death, God, love and horror, and sometimes about two or more of them at the same time. They are currently working on a poetry book titled MISPLACED ORGANS & VARIOUS SAINTS.