Refrigerator-damp oranges weigh down the scale of my palms.

            Salt tears streak down the back of my dress, but

                         I won’t turn                    to see that he’s not standing there.

                         No more dewy murmurs blistering

                                     against my skin, crawling before a crippled god.

                                                  No more waiting               before

             him and his glistering eyes and simpering voice,

                         him and his bone-colored ceilings and plastic walls leave me                        to my cutlery.

Palms press against two ends of a wedge, the bloody skins                             tremble.

              I hold the dull knife like a pencil and make the damp wood

                                                 shriek                    hysterically.

                                    I squeeze the purple lobes between my fists,

                                                watch them writhe like lesions and legions of petals

                                                                                  at his feet.

                                    My hands drip with broken flesh, strangle juice

                       into the leeching bowl. I make him watch

                                   as I dig out his share of the rot

           with cuticles outlined in bleeding sap and                     colored in neatly.

           I’ll clutch his                             hand and say that ugly heat I feel is love,

                                                 his stories can hemorrhage through me all they want,

                                                                  his, his, all of his,

           yes, dessert will be done before dinner is ready,

and the next cut I make because I cannot cut away my own

                          body, I’ll pretend I’m hacking off

             his purpled handprints

at the wrists.