Right before a fat line of speed, so high on sobriety



My first mistake was loving anything more than myself.
I drowned your flowerbed in wax and hid under the floorboards,
My tell tale heart beating like an African drum.
You found me the next day, shivering in the cobwebs
Counting the spiders and their eggs
It was like before, just like before, when you took me from that other place.
You held my head underwater and gave me a new name.
You named me yours, mine, ours.
The water is cold, my eyes sting. I have no memory before this moment
but a song my mother used to sing, about the place of her birth.
Though mine is here.
Yours is now.
Ours is always.
I found photographs later, much later, when you were gone.
Of another, who looked like me but with darker skin and harsher eyes.
Eyes like wet teabags, split down the middle.
A photograph picture that bled when I drowned it.
(Only to rename it!)
I called it mine, ours, beloved.
And it was at that moment that I chose to remember my own name,
A lacking of which had caused me to misinterpret my own dreams.
The peace I found in laying claim to myself was more than I could bear
At each passing season I came closer to finding your name
Closer to speaking it, but the words burned my tongue
So I instead whispered mine at the anniversary of your passing.
Yours, mine, ours.