Speak to me of love, she said,

and think on the sun’s subtle shade,

and please remember this is Valentine’s Day.

 

Speak to me of love, he said,

and wish upon this night time’s gentle gasp,

and on languid limbs lipped to dreaming better memory.

 

Her tongue bruised all the fruit from his words

as they ripened to tumble dew-drenched from

crystal eyes, as his hands tore at blossomed clumps

now crushed to weep beneath his palms. Teeth on skin

and pressed in sweat to test her neck’s brittle thinness,

to draw out blood beyond the surface and pool

soft opulence upon hair clawed out at root.

This is speech without words,

without breath, without air;

this is love with his fist at her throat,

forehead to forehead, mouths sharp and tight

together, like some rust-toothed trap that gouges

at the souls of two bodies snake-slid to one.

All looks will kill these hearts beaten harder

from second to hurting second to the flat palms

stung to glistened faces heaved up to drive her

nails under his skin; this is love in thrall to a

harsher Bacchus, who floods punch drunk

to drown out minds in darker tides.

This was love where the black light can’t shine,

where the hot dagger thrusts to puncture air

in brittle sighs; this was love lost to

a lust that revolts at pride, at the pallid

clamour of whole days spent choking on salt,

of curtains drawn to curse down the midday sun

and nerves rubbed numb in gushing streams of bitter wine.

This was the love that would meet a kissed cheek

with a knife, that would smudge her nesting smiles

to spit like vipers at his eyes; this love echoed

sneers into every word she gave him, strung

up a flesh hook cross atop the mass of latticed scars

and hung sinew to scream at sinew for relief from hidden war.

 

Speak to me of love, they said,

but obsession perfumes blood when in one the heart beats dead.

 

James Gallacher. 2015