the lucidity of cordate words

If I say I love you while I slit your throat
Will it still be a homicide? Or will it be a love affair,
Wrapped up in clean sheets and drying dishes
And all the other pieces of our unrelieved lives?

If I kiss you while you’re dying,
Will they check the lipstick for a fingerprint?
Or will they assume it is a stain, announcing my infatuation,
Bruise-black and smeared across your skin,
An old postmark marking ‘return to sender’?

If I leave you while you’re living
Will you follow me while I wander to hell? Or will you stay,
Slowly crawling alone in circles in your apartment
Eating the worn pages of fairy tales?

I can’t listen to your words that fall like rain,
Stinging like chunks of ice in a late winter blizzard.
I have watched you sit by the fire enough times to know
My heat won’t blister your skin.

The cacophony of my broken-down mind never sounded so sweet
Till you joined me there
And at the centre is a twist of the heart that is nothing short of dying
And nothing close to love.
The way you looked at me in the summer
Left nothing but temptation leading into the fall.

The heart that wins is soaked in blood
And I never lose an unfair fight
With fists in my heart and bones of steel
This contest will be won by the one who loses most.
I will say I love you when I slit your throat.