I’m dying poetry

In his Letters to Milena, Kafka wrote,
‘You are the knife I turn inside myself;
that is love. That, my dear, is love.’

And I can’t help but wonder
number of times I ate my own skin
to feel your touch on my lips.
And number of times I died,
trying to reason with unknown.
In search of words I travel
through my spine; your garden
in my lungs is dead. Butterflies
have turned into fireflies,
illuminating me while burning
my senses, I am alive you see.

There is a reason why I hate September,
we all have reasons, to reason with
unknown is a silent revolution, a war
with possessiveness. Like a failed
theory my eyes look for you
in patterns, for hints, so that
I can reason with my tied hands;
there are songs of lost touch in my heart.

All I am left with are questions.
I can’t come up with an explanation
for my fear of something that already
passed. Like the evening sky
there are too many colours, too many
shades of verses leaving my finger tips;
I paint my nails red when I miss you the most.

My skin sweat in how, why and where?
You ask me why no happy poems?
These, my dear, are barely poems.

© 2020 mermaidspen