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3am six weeks after we break up
you call and say
" my heart hurts i can't sleep
tell me a story"
so i tell you
when your heart cannot bear the weight of us
when you stop resisting the bottoming of it you will let its lead lined beating drag you
down to the abandoned hell of ancient Greece
past the three headed dog with too many gray hairs on its hide to raise its head
you will let it lead you past ghosts so long dead they drift around you
like cigar smoke like Sunday morning fog
you sit by the banks of the river Styx and watches old King Sisyphus
pushing a boulder up a mountain only to watch it fall before he can bring
it to the top over and over.
you tell him,"You know why you keep failing? its because you push in the hope of shoving
that rock down the throat of the ones who sentenced
you here to spite the people who never warned you what
was coming you dream you're smashing it into the faces
of the mourners at your funeral who spit into each others eyes so they could
pretend to cry spite is not strong enough to move that stone
there is nothing stronger than the legs that carry you through the night
to your lovers bed if you could remember the love you had in
your life you could move that stone."
the dust falls from the old kings shoulders as his body moves in a direction it has not
turned to in centuries "i have been moving this rock for so long
my finger prints are burned into the bones of it
my eyes have been scarred by it all i have in me is stone
i barely remember the sins I committed that brought me to this punishment
i do not remember love."
you gather his dust greyed face into your hands
"Here," you say "Let me give this to you
let me give you the thighs of my lover give you the glisten of his back as i bathed
him in the shower the slow drift of my body as i kissed him
and we fell as the water fell connected by grasping lips
the train roaring from his throat as he gave himself to me in every way he knew
to give let me give you the sweet rainfall of him
the old king drinks the memories from your lips
stands for a moment in the rain of your old passion
he gathers his great gray stone between the palms of his hands
crumbles the boulder to dust and blowing the remains over the hills
watches them drift into the waters it looks like forgiveness
like a Sunday morning fog like cigar smoke
like the memories of an old lover