Live It Up

 

Live It Up 
I tell you, live it up—
don’t you dare waste your time, boy—
I say it with my mouth already full of salt.
I know this sky, this white bloated ocean,
how it heaves and waits with its mouth open.
The wave is already tasting your name on my tongue.
It will drag you under like a sandcastle,
the kind I once built with my stupid, hopeful hands
before everything turned to spit and nothing.Every time you close your eyes
I am right there in the dark with you, choking.
Why don’t we scream?
Everything shines too much—
stars like shards of glass in the black throat of night,
cutting holes in me until I leak light all over you.She is the picture your heart painted
in thick red strokes of raw meat and need,
her face hammering behind your ribs
like a second, treacherous, starving heart
I want to reach in and rip out with my teeth.
Find the words, boy. Cough them up.
Tell her why you need that smile—
that bright, vicious little wound
I would sell what’s left of my soul to wear on my own mouth.I watched the sunrise bleed down
through every cloud we abandoned her under.
And we left her in the sand,
half-buried, still smiling
while the tide slipped its cold fingers between her lips
and opened her like a secret.Sweet water, wash that smile off her face.
Take the wind and break it open,
drive it screaming through this sick morning light
until I am sitting here again on the edge,
legs dangling over the long black drop,
and nothing—
nothing at all—
feels like anything anymore,
not even the wet ache between my thighs
that still calls your name in the dark.Live it up.
Don’t waste one fucking second, boy.
I am begging you from the bottom of my ruined heart.
The sky is a white ocean, as ravenous as I am.
Soon enough that wave will take you
down like a sandcastle.Every time you close your eyes
don’t you wonder why
she is all you ever find—
and still, still,
I help you leave her in the sand.