I drink like I’m trying to kill something inside me, chipping away at it day by day, unhooking its claws from my soft, internal flesh, and occasionally bludgeoning its viral stranglehold with a night of seppukurian abandon; choosing for myself the most delectable, grandiose of weapons with which to cut me core to core.

I wish only to feel better, to be free of that incessant writhing; thick chains and dark anchors, not weighing me down, but suffocating me in place.

I hear the way that others say they could quit at any time, and I believe them; it’s easy leaving, but they cannot see the fight I’m in; I cannot let up or it will win.

I fixate on the heartbeats; breaths swell like waves in caves. I time the rise and shy retreat to assure myself the ends will meet, cos sometimes it seems to take them too long; a moment stranded like forgotten songs left to wonder if one day they’ll ever complete, should the artist compose for my heart one more beat.

I stand devoted to the sea, though she may never know the love, there’s beauty in her fervency that draws from deep to rise above.

I do what little a poet can to cast a line into the swell; with hopes for hooks, I haul with hands to snag a lip or claw or shell.

I edge the tide in silent awe, brace cold beside unwavering form, bleed out and wash into the shore, evaporate to join the storm.

Throughout the broken night their tears fall fast like Texas hail, and crush the camps at city hall, and rip the air with wails.

Four streets away from disarray, we tightly lie awake, and grip our bulletproof sheets, and peek at tweets that make us shake.

I have a cupboard full of corks, each one scarred red, with cored-out hearts, each drilled by hand, then laid to rest – or rather ‘tossed’, in some feigned manner of casual (after all, who cares?) to the lower shelf, where nobody will find them. And how I hope someone will.

Wait, they’d say. What are these?