He smashes in my stained glass skull,
     crystal handled near its burning
     base, dispassionate, embracing
     my melting face like a candle,

     he flashes a bulb of a smile,
     wishful its bloom will return in
     spring, after the flood, flowering
     fistfuls of vows for removal.

He says it’s necessary, I’ll
     just end up too goddamned handsome
     unless he pushes in his pain(t),
     since all of his husbands just tell

     the judges he’s an unstable
     specimen, someone inhuman(e);
     that this isn’t love, but Stockholm
     Syndrome, keeping us in (t)his hell.

But we do travel; colours fall,
     and the black, and blue, and red runs
     autumnal, on my knees, on down
     past my lips, giving him head, all

     the way in as collateral,
     damage dressed in panic, ribs pinned
     up like silent tragedians,
     lost, wandering toward his call.

He wants me, if it’s possible,
     to ignore the sirens howling
     with copper knocks against the wind,
     low voices banging in the walls,

     booted hooves moving through, appalled
     to get clues of this brawl within;
     picking up his pants, he opens
     the door, greeting cops with bullets.

Sacramental bull, my head’s full
     of shit, here we lie, prostrate in
     our perish; hopeful it’s heaven
     that sent these Kevlar-clad angels,

     I rise, obliterated, pulled
     up by my neck; unforgiving
     of his lacerations, I hit
     home rock-hard what Cain enabled.