Humanism

It was written in blood
on your skin
from the very start.
Obligations stretch further than love.
Dearest, it was blood.

Winters in the shadowlands,
Dodging bullets from the west,
Grasping numb hands in sheer
desperation and
pleading your name only
because it hangs on to my tongue.

In the summers I bleed
into the kitchen floor
and you don’t even notice
the colour of your own self,
too busy creating perfection
from shredded skin.

I noticed the scars
on the back of your wrist
whilst watching cherry blossoms in the wind
and your sandpaper fingers
cut me bloody in embrace.
your scars.
my scars.
the same.

We had fallen
before I realised you were
all human; skin and bones,
teeth and fingernails –
and your essence
on every inch of me,
carrying you in my blood
and through my bones.

I scrubbed myself dark red
raw so I was nothing more than
flesh in my eyes, a skeleton
underneath and
no blood in my body.

Dearest, in the end
it was all just bad blood
through your skin,
through mine.