Midnight Catharsis
A crow flutters out of the streetlight’s glow as none of us knows
its silhouette from the blanketed sky.
We’re a block away from your house and your hands tell me
you don’t love me anymore. When I reach
for you, I collect more self-pity and pocket it for later.
You look at me over your shoulder
and disappear through the door. I walk away slouched and sluggish.
I am the history of losing my identity
while trying to remember you. We call it blossoming—the separation
of the self from what is destroying it.
The last thing your fingers touched was the red thread tied
around my thumb. It won’t unbraid
itself, so the thumb begins to plump. And pulse. And clench
nerves to their death. A scissor’s blade:
too thick to cut beneath ridges of skin. The kitchen cleaver:
a saint. The time is 12:34. The time
is now. Palm against cutting board, blade at the ready:
thwack! Clean cut against bone.
I can’t stop it, the sputtering of crimson onto white walls—
Somehow, I still feel the phantom touch of you.
Lianna Lazaros is a junior at SUNY Purchase studying creative writing. A poet from the Bronx, they love to study astrology, play the guitar, and collect scented candles. Their work has previously been published in Italics Mine.