Dependency Is Only Addiction If You Look It In The Eye

sweat stains down your shirt
carving beneath your shoulder blades like wings
the night we got too high to speak —
dead dogs in the road, your body
flaming as you fell from the tree.
your gunshot skull. the frozen ground

 blood between your teeth when you grin at me:
pitch-dark out. it could be ink.
i thought you were dead and
my lips won’t move around the words
so i kiss you anyway. i sip the iron from your mouth
and you let it happen. narcotic and terrible.
three-tab surreality: this and this and this
blood like acid, teeth like fangs, your hands
                           your hands
fisted in my hair like you want me in the first place.

 three hours and then I can speak again.
my deadweight tongue desert-dry and splintering
we’re going to freeze to death
because it’s midnight-dark and february-cold
and you’re telling me that you can’t feel it
but you’re shaking like a fawn 

your lips blue around the joint
pursed, inhaling, smoke curling into the air
away from you. you’re made of rust, stardust, and
everything is haze-warm and indestructible.
i can’t feel my legs but i can see your wings
when you roll onto your stomach,
frost crunching beneath the bones in your chest.
dead kids in the woods. foxes on the run.
the moon says 3am and the wolves start howling,
we have to go, we’re going to die—

 you tell me it’s fine. you say it doesn’t matter
because i’ll come back from the dead for you.
but you sit up anyway. your mouth this time is acrid
when you dig your picket-fence teeth into my bottom lip
until you relent, scarlet and panting, it’s you,
so fucked that you’ve forgotten me
in the woods, in the cold.
i thought you were someone else.
hoped. you hoped. a wax figure, the holy ghost.
me alone. skeletal
                     and not warm enough to fix you.

 the back of your head an open wound
this new high like sick in my throat still
grass moving, bodies burning. death by drowning
in the cargo-hold. it fits. it’s a field.
these things we do to each other:
one tree and you climbed it. two wings and you still fell.
concussed and catching your death
your sandcastle fingers crumbling against my neck
when you tell me to warm me up then,
so i do, i do, you’ll freeze without it.

the night we got too high to think
too much to move, your voice
pitched and working against mine
because i cannot love you in a way that will save you
is drowned in this arch darkness.
so i talk over you, words like plasticine,
because i                                                                      will save you
feels less like a hospice. less like being rendered
irredeemable by a blue-lipped seraphim
with a joint in her mouth