Your little red mouth
is a bottle of sadness
and you think you keep
it stoppered up,
but the cork is cracked
and the seal is loose
and you drip
little splashes of sorrow
every time you speak.
In the morning,
I wake next to your wet sheets,
your pillow soaked through with it.
It smudges on the rims
of glasses you drink from,
it tastes of salt and dusk and blue
on your lips
and even when you laugh,
it boils away and steams
in the air —
the room fills with fog,
you stop laughing again.
I used to think
you had only liters in you,
but some days I think
you have the whole deep sea.
This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.
