all

twenty-five: with only a lick

kissed you, wanted you, pierced you, gored you like a wound, like the first romantic, like my last torturer, like my hundredth wrong, to be mine your ache, to this devotion to last,

for this language of us to taunt what's left of my tongue—whose tongue is this to long for a savior? whose tongue am i to savor? whose tongue is this to sunder us apart with only a lick? with only a lick of what so little we have become?