Modern Romanticism

Deprecate it,
as soon as you
anticipate it,
believing that you
are leaving tracks,
but you are sinking.

Do you know
that you are drowning
to keep yourself afloat?

It’s the knot
that you tighten,
holding another one’s
total, equivalent ruin
close at hand.

You’re kissing faces
that have simply
sung for you to enter
their scarred arms.

You’re leaving traces.
It’s their shed skin
you hold up to your
trembling lips.

There will be
no one left
to signal you,
to hope that you
will visit their screams
to muffle your own.

There will be
just you to hear,
behind a closed door,
gaining no more
to bottle inside
your leaking heart.