Like Real People Do

'Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips/ We should just kiss like real people do' ~Hozier, Like Real People Do

Like Real People Do

By: Akhilesh Agarwal

I.

We are cutting ourselves open and stitching ourselves shut

With cut-glass strings and trembling hands 

Your lips have bled and stained your shirt bright red

How do you wash off the blood? I said

You smiled and looked at me like I was half-insane

You said, ‘Don’t you remember? You kiss it all away

Lick off the blood and swallow it all slowly’,

                I don’t remember ever touching you, ever being so close

‘You kissed me. You made me taste my blood.’

II.

You pin me to the floor by my throat, beating me to submission

This is nothing sexual, this is an ending I never desired

I lie desolate, repeating your name like a prayer

                What grave can hold me? I cannot be buried.

‘I will burn you to the ash, feed it to the birds

They will fly you to the moon, spread you over

You will think of me in the space, how you ruined me’

                I never did such a thing. I only kissed you

‘You did. You kissed me. You made me taste my blood.’

III.

Now I am stone cold and you are trying to shrug me off

We both know how this one ends, we have known it all along

 It ends with me alive and you sedated to the bone white

                I ruined you, I kissed you

‘How could you? You were mine to imagine.’

A Thousand Crows

‘Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.’ ~Richard Siken, Crush

A Thousand Crows

By: Akhilesh Agarwal

Imagine a thousand crows coming at you with a vengeance
               Imagine your lover’s lips sewn shut, the needle belongs to you
Imagine a bridge, the water beneath red, the sky above red
               Imagine a sword in a movie coming out of the screen and cutting you open

These are all the things I imagined when I looked at your fingers
               Hooking themselves in his neck, I hate the term lovers
Makes it sound like sex, makes it sound like a blasphemy
               Makes it sound like everything I don’t want the two of you to be

Throw open a window, we have to look at the sky again
               If fates are written in stars, I wonder if mine is dead
I have come to realize this, faith is like a crow
               Imagine it to be anything but black as sin.