Corpse Song

I enter your night like a darkened boat, a smuggler These lanterns, my eyes and heart are out I bring you something you do not want: news of the country I am trapped in, news of your future: soon you will have no voice I resent your skin, I resent your lungs, your glib assumptions Therefore sing now while you have the choice My body turned against me too soon, it was not a tragedy I did not become a tree or a constellation I became a winter coat the children thought they saw on the street corner I became this illusion, this trick of ventriloquism this blind noun, this bandage crumpled at your dream’s edge or you will drift as I do from head to head swollen with words you never said, swollen with hoarded love. I exist in two places, here and where you are. Pray for me not as I am but as I am.