At My Throat

It never starts off this way

but oh, how it ends

every time, the same.

Butterflies beat their wings

against my cavernous interior.

Just like in New York, I am peaking

and the result is unprecedented.

It never starts

anywhere else

but the tips of my fingers

hungrily clawing up the length of the digits

leaping from bone to bone

crossing joints like lowered draw bridges

ignoring the flesh

and gunning for that which

is me.

I can feel you in my ears,

fiery and beating,

I’m putting up a fight

but altogether losing

I don’t know how you do it,

the castle of my lies

besieged.

I’ve never learned the mystery.

But a master of the art,

you are

a Norse at my drawn-up door.

My knees wibble and wobble,

teetering on the edge like

boulders hoofed over by mountain goats,

I feel heavier than I am.

Each flex and forward

I ache

under the newfound pressure of you.

And now through

my heart

you render me raw,

marking your victory

complete. . .

~I’m cold~

I can finally see my breath.

Is this what it takes to feel alive?

- Samual Curtis