Heart Eaters

You kept me out with table salt
and clever incantations
you hissed beneath your breath

if you could have cut the constellations into my skin
you would have
but you knew enough to keep the cuts non-physical
and only slice deep where no one saw

"I don't love you, anymore," you said
and broke a glass to make a point
to cut through the shroud
we draped over our eyes

I broke a mirror as retribution
(it didn't hurt you, only my fist)
but what are words without some broken things
as emphasis?

we'll watch our lives go by in another universe
not fitting, not real, not  a l i v e
(I am a tin man and you're the rust)

but ok, I'm an adult, I'll admit it
I'm like you
I'm cut

you and me, sweetheart
we're impartiality perfected
but let's not call it apathy; we came out of it
with far too many scars

you snapped branches from the yew,
and pinned me up behind the glass
with their sharpened points
and you say it doesn't matter

I'm cut away from the sensation of fitting
and in the void of our omissions
I exist within the pressure
of our undulating motions
(in and out, apart, together)
we keep repeating all the steps
in our dance of self devotion
and our lack of self respect

until we're left so finely blended
that we can't be pulled apart
and that's when we'll admit it
when we'll peel apart our lips
and scream it to the nothing
that we've eaten our own hearts