it was the shattering of ceramic at first / my skin its own kind of sepulchre / we watch the black sky together / littered with our vices & warm plastic webbed between teeth / mother says i talk too much & not enough / i wonder how many deaths the stars have witnessed / constellations dripping with their troubled confessions / froth-mouthed we dance as if there’s no tomorrow / flesh before the gloaming betrays us / & our bones made fragments with sun-dappled conspiracies / the fear of static rises him from the dead / the middle of an apocalypse but we make love anyway / what is love if it isn’t livid / crooning songs i never listened to / peroxide blonde & black hair was never a match / songs my mother sang to lull herself to sleep / his breathing an oath under faded street lights / when the morning failed to arrive / hiding our mangled history / hair in places it shouldn’t be / i catch his cheeks singed with pink / my hands in places they shouldn’t be / i wonder what makes him think he is worthy / failed to prove my existence & my shadow made a caricature / stifled by bitter incense afraid of what we created / proselytized into a different faith / we recite our lines & forget them by noon / the type of love where i set it on fire & ran into the flames / & it still wasn’t enough / i count the days as they blur into each other / i’m told my body rages in too many colours / i count each breath until the burial / somewhere between heartbeats & silence a man watches the stars fall / the hymn of restless moons & their misery / planets with their languages / my children will call mother tongue