there’s only room for one of us

when i read your essay, i wanted to be inside you

not to be a pervert but when I read your essay I wanted to be inside you. some dead-brained and reptilian part of me wants to

nestle her nose against your bedsheet. you’re the kind of writer people read.

I think of the fingernail you chewed to the quick. the blood singing in your veins. the cup of coffee you had that day.

but you’re not always the skin. and I, the teeth.

I realize I’ll have to watch my back as long as there is pen and paper but I still wonder if you do it to hurt me or if the hurt comes as naturally as a comet hurling towards our home and blasting it into smithereens but not a spark of light touches anything else around it.

you’re not always the skin. and I the teeth.

and baby, maybe it boils down to this. there’s only room for one of us. and I love you but not enough to kill me to show you. and maybe one of these days, I WILL be inside you and see the spark that lights up your brain - that made you type out that exact passage.

but maybe if I wrote it, it would be limp,

well-beaten but well-loved

like a softened shoe in the caved mouth of a rabid dog.