the rot
Poetry
After Nico Kharat
what if it was the rot that did us in,
what if it was our own two front teeth.
what if was our hands,
bleeding, unspoken,
convulsing in the limelight. gone.
what did we do to deserve this?
what if it was the way
you took my head in your hands
and told me everything would be alright.
what if was the way i believed you:
i looked into your eyes and saw flesh.
they had always said
this is what we were born to be.
if not murderers, then alive.
after all, there is nothing more human
than betrayal.
we learn of stars that we’ll never get to see;
we learned about the depths of things,
we swallowed the knowledge
we weren’t supposed to understand.
they teach us to dream
dreams we’ll never get to reach.
maybe it was the way your mother did her hair that morning.
careful, exhausted.
slender fingers pulling through tresses.
the braid could’ve been a crown.
it could’ve been a noose.
maybe it doesn’t really matter
what it was or the way it happened.
what if all that matters
is how your tongue felt in my mouth,
or the way your hands memorized
all the dips and curves and lines of me.
what if was always just love?
maybe it was the rot that killed us.
maybe even the teeth or
the hands or the blood in our eyes.
or the love.
or the love, the love.
i guess it doesn’t really matter.
it was always going to be just you and me
and me and you and you and.
me.