Mackie Burt
For You

I’m leaking. You’re watching me. You think I’m bent. I am: not bent, not broken, but cracked, split in two by my scalding mind. I must be cold, you say. I’m shivering, but that is because I’m afraid you’re about to see the worst of it—my fall. You’ll turn me upside down, run your finger on top of the crack. “It’s chipped,” you say, “a piece forever missing.” I’m sorry my sweet boy, you’re right: It’s gone. I lost it. It dripped down a drain. You want to find it, fix it. My brokenness is causing yours. It’s too much for you, and you go. I spill. You slip through my wet fingers. We shatter on the ground.

There’s a hole at the top of the wall; it’s so small I can barely fit my pinky through. I stretch, wiggle, and squirm my fingers up the wall; I can do it, I must. My time is up—stretched and wrapped, taut with impossibilities. I jump, up and down, and rip my skin on the brick. He’s here again. His hands are on my face, my lips, and my nose. His thumb touches my teeth. He mumbles something about my face—that it’s clean and simple: “back to the way you were when you didn’t know who you were.”

Maybe he won’t see the hole. He smiles. “I love you,” I say, “so much more than all of these rotten parts of me. I love you so much more than I will ever love me.” What he says back I can’t hear. A hurried gush of water soaks us from above. Damn that fucking hole. He puts his hands beneath my feet. I inch myself up and swallow my devastation as I strain to reach.

Please don’t leave me. I gurgle. I’m almost one piece.