if the dead die again, let me live through them. 

let me breathe through the glass in their eyes and the stillness of their veins — 

if they die again, let me love through them, through the rupture of my heart and the

quake of my grief. let my Heart be as mighty as them. 

if my crime was to give, pour the red over my empty hands and beat and banish me so 

lavishly until i am shiny enough to Take. to be taken. swallow me entirely so i can be 

dissolved in your passerby heartstrings. let me lie in the soil of my soul, the wounds of 

the worms that eat up my flesh until my bones feed the willow that sprouts from my memory. 

there is more beauty in death than there ever was in your love. 

i hear the wails over my trunk and grow eternal from the stillness of misery. 

the truth is still but never silent. your breathing is my verdict, 

the blood on my heel, the broken steel that pierces my lover’s back. my lover in my mask. 

they say Achilles died twice so he could be born again. you will whisper into 

the shadows and see the shape of my urn, ashes begging for you 

to kill me a second time. to kill me again.