There I lie in August.

There’s no use to dissection. 

No, not in this quiet, empty room

Look how pallid it is, here.

Look at how the powder-wash falls from the walls

Like an urn crumpled over, within and upon itself.

One final act of regurgitation,

Unto a handful of dust.

Funeral parlors, the living lies father

Like two ghosts settled upon the edge of unbecoming

Who could not be stretched further apart.

A tongue in cheek, a cavity in one’s teeth

You herald at dawn, rich with the tarnished ache

Of Summer / it lies naked in your speech

There I lie in August, mottling each-to-each

Now, there is nothing left in parting.

We have nothing to do with tenderness.

You are a sailboat; you have never not known autonomy. 

You have lifted two lids to land 

(An oracular eye cast upon Golgotha,

Perched naked on the barren sand)

Regard the nails that indent each palm of her hands!

For you, I am learning all kinds of impurity. 

I curdle around you, I spoil, I form clusters.

I am cradled within a polyethylene bottle,

and I cast myself out to sea.

The water kisses you blindly,

Like two sunken eyes pressed gently together

Take one’s seasick sailors,

In a beating breath of salt.

Written by Emmanuelle Kate.

Emmanuelle Kate is a nineteen-year-old writer who believes there is nothing more lovely than the act of falling down dream-like literary rabbit holes of fiction and prose.

@emmyk4te