Deluxe Mourning Package

^{It had been a long time since I’d gone any place I’d wanted to be.
—Ottessa Moshfegh}

^{I eat the dark.
—Susan Rowland}

In a candlelit room up north,
I undress before the mirror, beckon
my reflection to bear witness,
petition the vanishing gaze of wax & wick
to salvage an unsalvageable man.

//

I flesh through each melancholy hour,
sceptre the moon into place.
Clouds cape the night in slaughtered wool.
What good is a witch who cannot sever
what was never meant or, better,
summon the dead’s most lonesome ovation?

//

On our first date, we speak of
cemeteries. I am mourning.
Poisoned sentimental. I tell her
of a photograph from the 1800s,
lovers earthed in a two-person coffin.
I am romanced by this shared vessel,
dark mudhive where love rots eternal.
She remains unmoved. Balks
at such commitment, the excess
of endlessness.

//

Oh look, I’m scrolling through a dead man’s phone again.
Last winter, I learned every other word for hunger.
So what do you imagine I can bring to your bed?

//

Tragic little masochist, I wife the shadow
of a coin-operated horse. We lower ourselves
into the underworld, nightgown clinging
like a phantom’s bedsheet.
Bridled/bridal, I feed myself
to the famished dark.
Something empty enters the room,
steeples through my wet aperture.

//

I awaken, pinned to the stranger’s headboard.
Light fangs from the mouth of my own becoming.
I pull her into me. Joybent, our dizzy
hammers hammer the gash. O god, when we climb
inside each other, vowels slashing the air,
I become more woman than sacrifice.
A lovesick witch hurled, moonward.