Hope is a Dangerous Thing by Shelby Khatami

I have never known

Love to be anything but sacrifice.

It has always come to me on its knees –

begging me to cut myself open.

It demands that I, respectably, hal-

ve myself in two so that this thing may be whole.

It has always come to me as a carnivore

it slurps on the silken sinews from heavy bones.

It comes to the same bones and bre-

    aks them, respectably, in halves.

It has always required me to rip my arms

out from their socket-homes,

It asks me to take them into my drooling mouth

until I vomit the ocean of swallowed tears.

It has taken my blood to paint

benevolence upon shrapnel-sharpened incisor teeth;

It has turned my body into currency,

black-stilled heart, a bronzed coin.

It pays debts with the stars in my irises,

made of fool’s gold – the eyes are worth the most.

It shears the budding roses from my sight,

leaving thorned stamens, the black nectar.

It swallows my skull-rotten eyes after,

simply to poke the tongue into the gaping holes.

It, respectably, cracks the ribs into soft flesh,

breaks my sternum at the bone-seam,

It calls the ravens to the feast, black birds

scavenge the flesh that has turned burnt-black,

It burrows into the wet folds of my grey brain,

crawls into crypt-charcoal atriums of my heart.

When these birds have finished their feast

When I am nothing but bronzed coins

When my bones fold in upon themselves – in upon dust

      You’ll see how hope

was too dangerous a thing

                to hold.