Annie stands by the bed,
one hand curled around an ornate Victorian post,
the other carving a surgical red line
across the uncertain heaving of my ribs.
She says, "You're not as
holy as you think,"
as she examines my body with a look
that collapses beauty
into wafer-thin fragments of flesh under her dissecting eyes.
Eyes so cruel
they disembowel even the last entrails of my love for her
and I feel the hemorrhage of my faithfulness
spill beneath the corpse of my longing.
My hope pours out from me like
the darkest wine,
a sacramental blood pooling around me
and staining the bed sheets
in the shape of a heart.
