I had a nightmare where I called you a corpse.
You went silent, left me for someone
who was everything I wasn’t:
soft where I was sharp, certain where I stammered.
We met again, balanced
on the sugar-spun edge of your wedding cake,
tracing a script in your icing:
“A good bride cannot be
neglected in the shadowed lea,
where white things bloom and no one speaks:
For Death takes only the beautiful.”
I begged you to love me again,
but your eyes, dark with loathing,
spoke first.
And then you fell.
Three stories down,
from your fondant apartment.
I catch you, because it’s a dream,
And because he is everything I am not.
Which is to say,
willing to let you go.
Now the wind chimes mourn in minor chords,
a hollow harmony of loss.
And my corpse is gone.