#it's about dissociation and blacking out and the thin visual line between road salt and black ice

[sacrilegious-skeletal-scribe]

the average nutritional value of road salt and the inside of a 9 millimeter casing

i have a secret

i have a secret and i’ve never managed to look my father in the eye while admitting it

and i’d rather spit in your face than tell it to you in confidence

the kind of secret you drag bodily into your grave and hope your stomach buries before the dirt gets that far

i have a secret i’d rather die than tell you and you’re about to figure it out

two and two make four, you can do this slugger

and there is glass in my fingers and slush warming itself on my ankles

and you're staring me down with shaking fingers

and between the two of us i’m pretty sure you’d vomit first if i smiled with my whole mouth

and you’re still just fucking standing there with my life in your hands like it was hard to grab

(i’m wondering idly if there’s enough money in my wallet to palm to you)

(enough to ask you to pull the trigger wavering between my right eye and collarbone)

(the odds of it hitting somewhere solid enough to kill me fast)

(the potential energy of a prayer so i can die, godless but quickly)

(god let me die quickly. god please turn the knife from somewhere i won’t see it coming)

there are spots in my memory like cheap film reel and there’s blood on the ground between us

and i can’t remember whose it is

there’s a copper smell in my mouth and ringing in my ears and i think that might be real

but there’s this look on your face like i bit your mother, or maybe just you

and there’s blood all over the fucking place 

and despite who’s holding the gun i don’t think it’s mine

streetlights are creeping down the alleyway like overbearing parents and they’re glinting roughly off every surface they can reach

yellow-white fuzz growing off windows and chainlink fences and a tire well

i can see the back half of a car around your wobbling knees

some old tanker halfway up the sidewalk and throughly in the mouth of the alleyway

i think i'm blacking out and i am so fucking scared i am about to miss my own death and

(i can’t stop staring at the grey-green car)

(paint glittering like soft chalk, somewhere between colors and my legs twinge underneath me)

(cramped and clawing and aching softly, the body willing the spirit to stir, to rise)

(to cross pavement like a dead man, to stumble, upwards and over)

(to rap a line of knuckles against the window, to see if it would break, if anyone is still sitting inside)

(if anyone is about to hear a murder from all the distance of two-hundred feet and a corner office)

(i can’t pull my gaze away, even as the muzzle flashes with the streetlamp mold)

(black then grey than white-gold and gone, sunk into the sea of dark static that surges when i turn my head that far)

(i haven’t been able to see out of my right eye for a couple of minutes now)

it’s not snowing

it’s not snowing anymore

i don’t know why it matters

why relief lives in a clear, starless sky waving down at a blood-smeared alleyway

where my knees hurt and my teeth hurt and i am not in any pain that is going to mean anything

i don’t know how much of me is mixed in with the grime and the slush and the gravel and i’m starting to suspect it doesn’t matter

because i’m pretty sure i’m gonna die here regardless

because it’s skin to cold to nothing, because i cannot feel my mouth 

enough of my throat left to know i am not speaking aloud

enough of me left to shiver and ache and watch you from somewhere on the ground

even as the wind tugs hair loose from the smear of blood spilling into your eyes

as mine sting and blister under the care of spilt ends and a breeze made of glass

and i’m starting to think the glass isn’t real

(It’s shredding my mouth and melting in my throat)

(cool and thin and lukewarm while it pools in my stomach)

(a faint whistle from the mouth of the alleyway, deadened in this brick maw of service doors)

(i am half dead and slack jawed and overwhelmingly grateful)

(because from this angle i can slide my gaze far enough over to meet yours)

and i much prefer the version of this encounter

where you are gifted the view of my death

and not just the view of you killing me